And They Came Bearing Gifts

Time for a Christmas post! Anyone who knows me knows that I am prone to talking about nutrition, and when that happens I'm especially likely to bring up the sub category of inflammation. In chiro school we were trained to understand the deleterious effects of chronic inflammation because one of the consequences of said inflammation is the sensitization of the pain system. I frequently demonstrate this to patients by bending back my index finger and telling them, "this doesn't hurt now, but see me in an hour. If my pain system were sensitized this might start to hurt in ten minutes. This causes situations where stimuli that is usually considered non-painful becomes painful; everything just starts to hurt." People get that, and besides, it's the truth.

Explaining the actual mechanisms of inflammation can get tricky--for one thing, most people just don't care that much about how it all works. Also, people don't have the time to invest that it takes to wrap one's mind around it. They just take some non-steroidal anti-inflammatories (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen and move on with life.

Like most things in life, though, taking a pill for what ails you isn't likely to be the wisest course of action in the long run. Long term usage of NSAIDs, for instance, can cause joint degeneration. And people often take ibuprofen daily for the aches and pains that they associate with walking on planet earth. Along with the NSAIDs are big pharma's select Cox2 inhibitors such as Vioxx (which was taken off the market) and celebrex, but those drugs have developed reputations for causing cardiac events (one of my favorite euphemisms). Besides, the Cox pathway is just one way the bad things you eat can get turned into pain. When one pathway is cut off, the other pathway gets more traffic. And so it goes.

There are times when we eat stuff we shouldn't. These times, for me at least, are often accompanied by generally high stress--such as during the holidays. Put bad eating and stress together and you've got a perfect storm of inflammation to deal with. And if you're like me, you don't want the eroded joints or heart attacks we just talked about. Fortunately, there are some natural alternatives readily available (some of which may be in your refrigerator right now). Here's a short list of the heavy hitters:

Cinnamon
Ginger
Tumeric (the stuff that makes curries and mustard that special color of yellow)
Rosemary
White Willow (what? You don't have White Willow in your fridge?)

Most any spice you can name will have properties that modulate inflammation--that is, blunt the impact of the bad aspects of inflammation while bolstering the good.

You may be wondering what any of this has to do with the title of this post or my allusion to Christmas. Well, here goes: Boswellia is a potent anti inflammatory that has been found to relieve joint pain, especially in the weight bearing joints of the knees. It also has been shown to be effective for treating asthma, and ulcerative colitis. The dried sap of the Commiphora species of trees has been shown to be a potent anti inflammatory as well. So has gold for that matter. Boswellia, by the way, is another name for frankincense, and that dried sap I just mentioned is what we call myrrh. Seems like the gifts left for the new king had layers of meaning beyond the symbolism usually attributed to those gifts.

And by the way, boswellia, along with many others from the list are found in some of the products we carry at Green Chiropractic. Have a great December.