Information on popular complementary and alternative medical topics

The better your muscle tone, the less pain you may experience. Good muscle tone has a positive effect on your pain for not only is a well-stretched muscle less likely to be injured, it will also experience less pain.

If you are experiencing chronic pain it is important that you attempt to stretch a little each day. As your muscles stretch, your muscle tone will be improved.

There are a few important pointers you should note:

1. Stretch only until you feel the pull in your muscles. These muscles have been inactive and it will take some time until you can accomplish a full stretch.

2. Start out slowly and build up your stretching day by day.

3. As you begin the stretch, take in a breath, then as you follow through with the stretch, slowly let your breath out. This will help you to remain in a relaxed state as you stretch and you will be less likely to cause any injury.

4. Become aware of each part of your body as you stretch. You will become familiar with your body and know where more attention is needed.

5. You will achieve more mobility through stretching.

6. Stretching promotes good circulation, which in turn creates healthier muscle and speeds up the healing process.

7. Your stretching will be something that you do for yourself. It will affirm that you not only believe in your ability to take control of your body, but you are willing to be responsible for a part of your recovery. It will help to raise your self-esteem.

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In his book ‘Applied Hypnosis and Hyperempiria’, American psychologist and expert in imagery techniques, Dr D. E. Gibbons, presents a catalogue of useful imagery techniques. Gibbons believes that the use of imagery can in fact enhance sensory experiences. Thus, people are better able to utilise suggestions aimed at helping them to achieve pain relief — or even a significant change in behaviour.

Amongst these is a dolphin image where migraine sufferers are asked to imagine themselves as a dolphin swimming in the sea. By slowing the heartbeat and decreasing blood pressure, circulatory congestion in the head may be alleviated and the headache symptoms gradually cease. The effect of the following suggestions may be enhanced by the headache sufferer assuming a seated position before the imagery session begins:

‘Picture yourself now as a dolphin, swimming lazily along just below the surface of the sea. Feel the water above you gently warming your back. And, feel the cooler water beneath you as you swim lazily along.

‘You think how refreshing it would be to dive down all the way to the bottom. . . . Let yourself begin to dive now, diving easily and gently all the way down to the bottom through the crystal clear water.

‘Any previous discomfort you may have felt is fading away. You feel the cool, soothing currents rushing by as you sink deeper and deeper. Your system continues to slow down in response to the increasing pressure and cold. ‘You continue to drift down and down, sinking all the way down to the bottom. You’re almost there. You experience for a few moments the enjoyment of the cool freshness as you swim along. ‘You will return to your normal sense of time and place. But, after you return, the feeling of peace and well-being will remain with you and all traces of your previous headache will have vanished.

‘Even after you have returned to your normal sense of time and place, you will continue to feel just as good as you do right now.

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Very few people have any real knowledge of hypnosis. Usually, what little they know has been gained from stage hypnosis, television or from popular books.

Joan’s headaches

‘I get these incredible headaches every day above my right eye. I’ve had them so long that it’s hard to remember exactly when they started. But they’ve increased over the past 18 months,’ related Joan, 39, a fashion buyer at a large department store.

She had been suffering for years with persistent migraine headaches for which she had not been able to get relief from her GP, psychiatrists, osteopaths, physiotherapists and chiropractors.

‘I’m at my wits’ end. I can’t sleep,’ Joan complained. ‘The slightest upset at work, or cross word at home, brings on these crushing headaches. ‘I can’t take much more. I feel I’m going to snap,’ she said, describing how acupuncture and numerous medications had failed to give her long-term relief.

With two or three sessions of hypnosis, together with an appropriate anti-depressant medication, Tryptanol, she was able to control her headaches for the first time in many years. It is now some two years since she attended the pain clinic but Joan still uses her hypnosis tapes. She is still taking the long-term dose of Tryptanol which is being used primarily to control her pain.

When first seen her marriage was suffering, she had lost interest in sex and there were numerous rows because her husband seemed incapable of understanding the reasons for her frequent headaches. Extensive psychological tests at the clinic established that Joan had a very high score for obsessionality. She was an absolute perfectionist.

One of the things Joan learned from hypnosis and relaxation therapy is that things don’t have to be absolutely perfect all the time. She has learned to flow with life’s day-to-day problems rather than having a low threshold of tolerance to annoyances.

This means she now virtually has no headaches. She has accepted the need for taking long-term medication, being reassured that anti-depressants, unlike tranquillisers, are totally safe and are non-addictive. The important thing is that she has accepted the fact that she may have pain of varying degrees indefinitely but that she can cope as long as she takes the medication and uses self-hypnosis.

Joan’s case is an excellent example of what a powerful pain treatment tool hypnosis is — far removed from the tawdry stage-show image. Hypnosis is a form of psychological therapy involving a state of selective concentration, spontaneity and detachment. Thus, it has long been applied as either a primary or additional therapy in many pain states including burns, migraine, cancer and also in obstetrics. It may also be highly effective in chronic organic pain, particularly of malignant origin and for patients able to disassociate themselves from their pain experience.

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Although the use of procaine in the treatment of chronic pain is relatively new, it has been used as a local anaesthetic since it was discovered by the research chemist, Einhorn, in 1905 as a synthetic alternative to cocaine.

It is still widely used to produce localised nerve blocks and has stood the test of time as far as toxicity and safety is concerned. Commonly known as Novocaine, it is very similar to a dental injection to block pain.

Its pain-killing action was first noted during the First World War, but was then largely forgotten. Its use, when given intravenously in the treatment of chronic pain, has been gradually established over the past ten years. This has been mainly due to the work of Dr K. Livingston of Toronto.

Is It addictive? This question is particularly important when the treatment of chronic pain is a continuing situation and the danger of addiction looms large.

Procaine is quite different from any narcotic. There is no evi¬dence that it produces any addiction or dependency despite pro-longed clinical trials involving hundreds of patients.

Initial studies presented at pain conferences in Australia are tending to confirm the safety of the treatment. Another more potent and longer lasting local anaesthetic, Xylocaine or Lidocaine is now being promoted as the first choice alternative to narcotics in acute migraine episodes in hospitals and clinics around the world. Like procaine this drug is administered directly into the vein.

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There are two types of epileptic fit. In grand vial epilepsy, the sufferer falls to the ground unconscious, goes very stiff, and then jerks and twitches uncontrollably. In petit mal epilepsy, die sufferer does not usually fall, but simply stares blankly for a few seconds, and is unaware of external events. It is mostly children who suffer from petit mal epilepsy, and they usually grow out of it by their teens. Epilepsy is a disorder of the brain, in which one group of brain cells becomes over-active and sends out strong electrical signals that overwhelm other parts of the brain.

Children with severe migraine sometimes suffer from seizures, probably epileptic in nature. Studies at Great Ormond Street Hospital in London have shown that eliminating certain foods can help these children, and the seizures often clear up along with the migraine. So it is probably worth investigating the role of food in epileptic children, but only if they also have migraines, or some well-recognized allergic condition, such as asthma, allergic rhinitis or eczema. How foods might provoke a seizure is a mystery, but they may affect the blood vessels supplying the brain, as they are thought to do in migraine.

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If you inherited good health and vigour you should always cherish and appreciate these valuable gifts. Inherent advantages should be enjoyed and used to make others happy too. An old proverb puts it this way: ‘The happiness we give to others will return to make our own hearts rejoice.’

Life is like good garden soil. It brings forth nothing if we do not sow, till, water and care for it. Without good seed even the best soil will not produce a thing. If we do not put anything into life, we cannot hope to get anything out of it. Again, the poet’s words come to mind: ‘Know that the noble mind puts goodness into life, but does not seek it there’! All the things that raise our spirit and give us strength are like valuable and beautiful plants in our lives. The useless things that hang about us, imperfect beings that we are, are as weeds, which should be pulled out and destroyed.

Undoubtedly one of the best and most useful plants or attributes we possess is happiness. This not only brings peace to our spirit but also healing to our body.

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Once the balance of the electric field is upset, all kinds of disturbances may manifest themselves; for example, we can be overcome by an unnatural heavy fatigue, or persistent headaches, sometimes leading to troublesome migraine and depression. A lack of vigour and initiative often comes in its wake. Worry and nervousness may set in, bothering the sufferer so much that he does not know what to do with his fidgety limbs. He may fall victim to an unpleasant nervous condition, coupled with inner discontentment.

Since modern technology enables us to measure this electromagnetic field, we know that concrete, and reinforced concrete in particular, is able to rob much energy from those people who have to live in concrete buildings, the amount depending upon their individual sensitivity. For this reason, if you have the choice, select instead natural stone, brick or, better still, wood as the main building materials if you plan to build your own house.

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The virulence of poisons should be judged not merely on the basis of their specific effects, but on their long-term influence. Poisons that trigger typical symptoms such as vomiting and diarrhoea but are easily expelled from the body or neutralised may be unpleasant and considered dangerous by the person so affected; however, poisons that produce none of these symptoms but remain in the body, causing degenerative or insidious conditions, are really much worse. In fact, they may have a considerable role to play in the development of cancer, and it is unfortunate that physicians and the health authorities in general find it difficult to recognise them.

To illustrate this point further, I know of one representative of the chemical industry, involved in the manufacture of pesticides and insecticides, who challenged the opponents of the industry to produce evidence of fatalities resulting from the application of such chemicals. No one would deny that arsenic is a dangerous poison, nor that opium is a hazardous drug. But it would not be easy to provide conclusive evidence that, say, the death of a woman who had eaten arsenic to improve her complexion and looks had been caused by her doing so. Even if it were possible to discover such a case, another expert would almost certainly stand up and prove a different cause of death. The same holds true of opium addicts.

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If we slice a wheat grain lengthways we will find that the white inside is mainly made up of starch. White flour comes from this part. The yellowish germ is located at one end of the kernel. Years ago the wheat germ was not fully used because no one knew about its great value as a source of vitamin E. The outer protective cover over the starchy part is the bran, consisting of a tough sheath which, being pure cellulose, is indigestible. This roughage should not be eaten if one suffers from gastritis and stomach ulcers, for it is so tough and sharp-edged that it would actually irritate and inflame an already damaged stomach lining. In the case of ulcers it may even trigger pain and light bleeding.

A number of valuable minerals are found in the layers between the starch and the outer cellulose sheath. These layers contain vitamins of the  complex, gluten and amino acids essential for the building up of body protein. It is exactly these valuable and important parts of the wheat kernel that are usually fed to cattle, the bran together with its roughage or cellulose and germ. It is quite an achievement that modern milling machines are able to separate the valuable layers without including the indigestible cellulose, so that we can actually obtain the important elements of the grain and include them in our diet. This product is sold as ‘wheat germ and bran.’

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Vitamin E is rarely found in meat, except in those parts that are unsuitable for human consumption, for example bulls’ testicles, the spleen, placenta, pancreas and pituitary gland. It is, however, found in fish and egg yolk, and in small amounts in milk as well as butter.

It is more abundant in vegetable products, primarily in cereal germ, oil fruits and cotton seed, also in corn (maize), peanuts and all varieties of cress – watercress, garden cress, nasturtium and American cress. For this reason the formulae of Herbamare and Trocomare include these cresses. Vitamin E is also present in spinach, lettuce and alfalfa (lucerne), as well as in most leafy salad greens. That explains why vegetarians probably meet their daily vitamin E requirement more effectively than meat-eaters. If you suffer from a deficiency, make use of the above-mentioned sources. For quick results take wheat germ oil, and if you do not like its taste, use wheat germ oil capsules, which are quite easy to swallow. The gelatine capsule dissolves in the intestine and there is no danger of the taste repeating on you.

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