Chronic Pain Relief: 14 All-Natural Painkillers

Hey, guys. Dr. Josh Axe here with Jordan Rubin. Welcome to Ancient Nutrition Today. We've got a great topic today. We're going to be talking about how to reduce chronic pain. And Jordan, in someone's lifetime, I was reading over 80% of people at some point will struggle with chronic low back pain. And the number of people that at some point are going to struggle with pain in their life, it's pretty much everybody multiple times. And so we know we've got some natural ways today we're going to be talking about how to reduce chronic pain and inflammation. So if you're a person watching today or know somebody with arthritis, fibromyalgia, any type of muscle pain, maybe you tore an ACL or a shoulder in the past or have muscle spasms or any type of pain, even neck pain, back pain, and headaches, we're going to talk about how to overcome those conditions today. And also, hey, help us spread this message right now. Teaching people how to use food as medicine. Take a second and punch your share button, click your love button, help us spread this word now. So Jordan, a lot of people experience chronic pain. What are some of the things that people turn to instead of these natural approaches to start?

Well, it's pretty interesting that the narcotic painkillers, we'll start there because these are sort of the highest class, we're looking at serious issues, one being addiction. So we've seen a lot of athletes that we're fans of. be addicted to painkillers, right? And you also, of course, see people that you know and love that are in that situation. So that's number one. Number 2, there is now, I don't know if you've seen the commercial, but there are commercials for a new medication to combat opioid-induced constipation, OIC. So you've got an issue with addiction to these painkillers and you've got serious side effects that now there's a medication for the medication for the medication medication.

Yeah.

Anyway, so that's just the... narcotic opioid painkillers, then you've got COX-2 inhibitors. We know that Vioxx and Celebrex, super, super popular. I know that many athletes today are on those for years, right?

Oh yeah.

And then certainly some of us in the civilian population, and those are just NSAIDs. People are using aspirin, ibuprofen, etc., day after day after day. And I'm not suggesting that there's never a time for painkillers, there's never a time for medications, but what if there were natural methods that didn't cause constipation but actually helped your Oh yeah. What if there were natural methods that didn't cause toxicity but actually helped you detoxify? We call that a twofer. So everything we're going to talk about today to combat your chronic pain, migraines, tendonitis, knee pain, back pain, as you mentioned, is absolutely endemic in America, and the list goes on and on, psoriatic arthritis, pain from fibromyalgia, pain from various traumas. We're going to go after it today. It's going to be fast-moving. There are about 14 great recommendations, so get out your smartphone, make sure to get this link and share this video because we believe that this can help 95% of the people out there because I don't know anyone who hasn't been in pain.

Absolutely. So we're going to jump in and talk about the top vitamins, supplements, herbs, essential oils, and foods, and natural treatments to overcome chronic pain today. And I want to reiterate something Jordan said. I remember years ago reading some studies on Vioxx and also seeing how many people have died from taking that drug. It was staggering and it's causing heart failure. If you look at today, people taking the typical NSAIDs, it's actually the 15th leading killer in America. It actually has been shown to cause intestinal bleeding of the GI tract. And so again, these medications have side effects. Good news is, We're going over all-natural approaches today. So Jordan, number one, we talk about it all the time, talk to us about all the benefits of turmeric. And up here you have the extract and the oil, what's the difference between the two?

Well, turmeric has many great compounds and we've talked about this recently. Curcumin or curcuminoids are powerful antioxidants and pain reducers, but they also have turmerones which are powerful for the brain and we believe many other areas. So turmeric extract, which is high in curcumin, and turmeric oil, either a CO2 or an essential oil, has the ultimate complement. You can use turmeric in a tea, in a decoction, people are using it now topically. It's absolutely amazing for the brain, for the gut, for the immune system. But if you're in pain or better yet, if you're aging and you want to avoid it, I recommend consuming turmeric extract every day. And turmeric oil, and it's great for— I know people that have cancer are using as much as 8,000 milligrams of turmeric extract. Recently, I've been consuming turmeric CO2 or essential oil, and I'm doing 30 drops a day. And so that is about 1,800 milligrams, and I'm loving it. Sorry.

I love it too. Well, actually, I started doing the same thing, doing the CO2 oil of turmeric every single day, Jordan. Just, you know, more smoothness in my joints, overall feeling better. So again, turmeric extract and the CO2 oil, very, very powerful at naturally reducing inflammation. Curcumin, turmerone, as Jordan's talking about, fantastic. I want to give a shout-out to some of our viewers who are watching right now. We've got so many of you watching from all over the world currently, and I want to give you a shout-out. So we've got Linda Young watching from Oregon. Hey, Linda, thanks for joining us here today. Watching from Jackson, Tennessee. Watching from Killeen, Texas. Thanks for joining me today. Barbara Wolf actually has a comment here. She said, they gave me painkillers like candy, horrible. My dentist also gave me OxyContin for dental surgery and never took it, is her comment here as well. And we actually have Beatrice watching from Nairobi, Kenya. Hey, Beatrice, thanks for watching here today. And we're getting a lot of comments and questions here, Jordan, about different things they're recovering from. Patricia says she's in Brooklyn, New York right now and she's recovering from an ACL sprain in her knee as well.

Hmm.

So we'll give you some great tips on things you can do. And as we're talking about, millions of people right now are struggling with chronic pain and they don't know the natural treatments. They don't know that that they can use food as medicine. So hey, be on mission with us, help us spread the word right now. Take a second and punch your share button, helping spread the message on how to use these natural remedies to reduce chronic pain. So I'm going to talk about frankincense here. We love this combination. Boswellia, if you look at the extract or frankincense, which its name is typically known as boswellia in Latin, is the extract in it is called boswellia. And so again, you can take it in a powder form as a supplement. Really, really strong anti-inflammatory benefits. In fact, there are different companies that will sometimes combine turmeric and frankincense together. The oil is also very powerful. So frankincense contains a lot of what's called boswellic acid. The oil contains higher compounds of things like alpha-pinene, which are also really, really strongly anti-inflammatory. Another thing, Jordan, I was reading online about the exact compound found in frankincense is pinene. Yeah. It's actually the compound that they put when people are having— it's actually synthetically made as a medication for people who are struggling with chronic anxiety. And a lot of times, some of the medications they give for people that are mood-related for chronic pain actually is what's in frankincense. So frankincense oil has some really incredible compounds. The way I'd suggest you use it is you can do a few drops internally. You can also simply just rub it on an area of concern. I recommend mixing that with other essential oils, a warming and cooling oil. But again, turmeric, frankincense, 2 of the most powerful herbs or supplements you can take, or oils, in terms of reducing chronic pain. Jordan, holy basil, I know this is one of your favorites, mine as well. Talk about how holy basil can really support the body in reducing pain.

All of these herbs and spices are high in antioxidants, which helps the cells protect themselves and really reduce inflammation. Holy basil is great for the mood, it's great for the brain, and it has anti-inflammatory effects similar to like to a natural COX-2 inhibitor. So again, we want to use holy basil herb, we want to use holy basil oil. These are rare. Holy basil oil and turmeric oil aren't very commonly found, but they're both amazing.

Yeah.

They're floral, they're wonderful. Take it orally.

Yeah.

Helps your mood, helps really your entire body. And one thing that I want to talk about, depression and anxiety is painful. Now, it doesn't affect prostaglandins or eicosanoids or sort of the hormones involved in pain, but it's serious pain. And so holy basil can lighten your mood and brighten your day by transforming your health. So really, really important, I recommend using a holy basil extract. Making a tea or an infusion out of it, taking holy basil oil, and we're working on all kinds of ways to help you with content, information, education, and products to get these into your life. But make sure to do this. In India and around the world, people consume these botanicals each and every day to maintain a pain-free life.

Yeah, great advice here. Holy basil, incredible as an adaptogen. Next one here is chili pepper. And remember, chili peppers, they really increase circulation. If you're a person as well that has cold extremities, maybe your hands get cold, your feet get cold, and you're having heart issues and just don't have good circulation, chili peppers, whether it's cayenne or ghost pepper, all of these have tremendous benefits at really improving circulation and reducing chronic pain. In fact, capsaicin, one of those compounds that's found in cayenne pepper specifically, Is a great natural pain reliever. And Jordan, I love actually combining chili pepper with things like turmeric as well.

Oh, yeah.

And there's a study Jordan and I have both referenced where turmeric was taken with a compound or curcumin taken with piperine, which is one of the main compounds found in black pepper, actually helped better get it— helped bioavailability, helped it get better throughout the body. So, but chili peppers and capsaicin are going to work in a very similar manner. They're going to open up the capillaries. It's going to allow these other anti-inflammatory compounds get throughout the body. So remember this, when you're taking a turmeric supplement, oftentimes it's also beneficial to take a chili supplement with it or some sort of supplement that has hot peppers in it. Absolutely.

Number 5 is wintergreen oil. Now, wintergreen is a powerful topical analgesic, and analgesic is a painkiller. Wintergreen has very strong medicinal properties. And so, if you are making a rub or if you want to overcome joint issues, muscle issues, wintergreen is amazing. Inhaling it is really good too because through olfaction you can begin to lessen pain. And you know what's interesting about pain is a lot of times there's an emotional component to it and you can actually work through or overcome pain. That's how people walk on hot coals and do all these— punch bricks, etc. I mean, you really can do that.

Oh, yeah.

And essential oils help. to energize the mind and make you more resilient to pain. We know that in the fighting arena, Muay Thai fighters, they do just wild things, put their hands in glass and all of that, and that all helps to really deaden your nerve endings and sense of pain. But wintergreen is great topically as an analgesic and can help relieve pain often in minutes.

Yeah, great advice here. And by the way, we'd love to hear from you right now. If you have an essential oil that you've ever used and you saw results with it, Specifically for any type of chronic pain, maybe there's an essential oil you use for muscle aches, maybe for headaches. We'd love to hear the single or maybe the combination of essential oils you use that have helped you relieve some sort of chronic pain, discomfort, maybe a burn, but any type of sort of pain or inflammatory issue you have, we'd love to hear from you here as well. All right, Sandra here actually says she loves rubbing on a mixture Or actually, she loves using wintergreen. She uses that regularly for chronic pain. Alicia Sankey says she uses ginger oil for chronic pain. We know ginger contains gingerols and zingerbene, some great things. Tuce Giblin says she loves to use a mixture of lavender and peppermint together. We know that's actually a great combination for getting rid of headaches there as well. Great advice, guys. All right, so rosemary oil, this is another oil we love, and Jordan, I know this because I'm with him all the time and sometimes he comes in smelling like oils. I'm sure I do as well. But he loves anointing his head with different oils. Specifically, one of his favorites is rosemary. And is that where you get your thick hair? Is that—

Yeah, absolutely. All right.

So rosemary oil, we know it's great for naturally thickening the hair, but also medical studies have shown it helps reduce inflammation as well as cortisol levels. Now, one of the things Jordan mentioned earlier, Jordan, I actually just talked to a friend of mine who's a doctor in Colorado. And he said that he just read a book on neuroplasticity and really how the mind affects so much of the pain we experience.

Absolutely.

And so he was talking about using essential oils. He started using rosemary and frankincense and helichrysum, smelling them. Actually, he went in for a surgery he had and he said he had had this surgery once before and he said his pain this time was like 75% less and he really believed it was because Some of the things that he was doing naturally. And really, he said part of it he felt like was his mindset in helping overcome chronic pain. So we know rosemary oil works both on the brain as well as on your body at a cellular level at reducing chronic inflammation. So again, it's great to mix these oils. We've mentioned this before, mixing a wintergreen oil with another essential oil, rosemary and some others, rubbing it directly on an area. You can mix it with some coconut oil, but we know these essential oils are powerful. And Jordan, number 7 here, I know what we believe is the Number one superfood everybody should be getting. And I know, you know, I had bone broth powdered protein this morning for breakfast, 2 scoops of it. Talk to us about how bone broth specifically can help relieve chronic discomfort in the body.

Bone broth has many anti-inflammatory components. We're talking about collagen, chondroitin, glucosamine, those are proteoglycans, they actually are polysaccharide-based Compounds that help mediate pain really, really amazingly well. We know glycine and proline are powerful amino acids. Even minerals such as potassium and the glycosaminoglycan—I know I'm saying a lot of long words—hyaluronic acid is powerful for pain and inflammation. When you consume bone broth, when you make it yourself, and we have recipes here at Dr. Axe.com. When you buy bone broth. frozen or packaged, when you take a bone broth powder, you are having an anti-inflammatory effect. And I believe people begin to feel it in about 4 days. You need to do a few cups a day equivalent, but in a few days you'll begin to feel it. And it has a crescendo effect. That means every day you get better and better. I love it. And I've said this many times, I just— I really got into bone broth more heavily than ever when I had a knee injury. And it was a serious one. I was on crutches. I didn't walk for 2 and a half months with a knee condition, and I was able to implement a radical bone broth protocol. And I was doing between 24 and 48 ounces a day of bone broth.

Wow.

And then I was doing bone broth powder, doing them both, and I've gotten better and better. And now I'm able to have a subpar performance on the basketball court occasionally. Literally though, over 40, and I played full-court basketball 5 days in a row a couple of weeks ago. And from someone who couldn't walk, that's a pretty big deal. And so I'm seeing great results day by day. This is really the backbone of an anti-inflammatory chronic pain program. And I've heard people say, when I'm consuming bone broth, I'm good, but when they stop and don't get those nutrients and beneficial compounds, they begin to hurt. Bone broth doesn't just mitigate pain, it helps to rebuild things, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, absolutely awesome. We have a question here, a great question here from Anna— I'm sorry, from Creamy, and she said, what should we specifically take for rheumatoid arthritis? Well, Creamy, I just want to say what Jordan recommended here, bone broth. If you've got rheumatoid arthritis, bone broth should be a basis of your diet. I would get some great bone broth powdered protein. Do that every morning in a smoothie. I would do bone broth soup throughout the day. So make bone broth a cornerstone. Also, you know, the turmeric is something I would definitely do. Something we don't have on the board, but I would definitely recommend as well is an omega-3 supplement. You know, getting a lot of omega-3s every single day and then lots of fruits and veggies. You do that, you should start to get some relief from those RA symptoms there as well.

Absolutely. And then I will throw in this, and these are not on the board. I'll have things to add at the end as bonuses, but in addition to bone broth and turmeric, I highly recommend not just an omega-3 but one that is high in EPA. And if you have rheumatoid arthritis, there's a great study showing 12,000 milligrams of omega-3s a day from fish, not from flax, for I want to say 12 weeks produced great results with medication and on its own. And lastly, systemic enzyme therapy can be good too.

Oh yeah, Jordan's mentioning proteolytic enzymes such as bromelain and papain, some of the other we've talked about are fantastic. So I'm going to talk about next here chiropractic care. You know, if you are struggling with chronic, especially joint issues, chiropractic care can be great. In fact, there was a study I read recently finding that chiropractic care was 5 times more effective than NSAIDs at actually treating long-term neck pain.

Wow.

So if somebody is having chronic neck pain or low back pain or Pain in the mid-back, we know chiropractic care works. You know, pain can be caused by different things. That's a whole thing. Your pain can be caused by chemical reaction in the body. It can be caused by inflammation. It can be caused from lack of mobility in a joint. It could be caused from a muscular spasm. It can be caused from instability. There are lots of different causes of chronic pain, and so obviously diet is crucial and key at reducing system-wide inflammation. But if you have a misalignment or you have lack of mobility in a joint, it's kind of like this sewage builds up, new nutrients aren't getting in, and so what can happen is it can start causing issues where the joint degenerates. That's the great thing about chiropractic care. It helps increase motion in the joints, can help improve posture, realign the spine, and help the body heal naturally. And by the way, if you've got a chiropractor that you love, hey, let me know if you've ever done chiropractic or you love chiropractic. Hey, feel free to mention your chiropractor or hashtag them here on Facebook Live right now. And now we're going to talk about something— actually, someone just asked a question about soft tissue therapy. And I want to say bodywork and soft tissue therapy, whether it be ART or Graston or other types. Jordan, I'm sure you've worked with other people doing muscle work on the body, but getting that deep tissue massage or different sort of muscular therapy can be great as well, right?

Absolutely. And I'm going to defer to you on all the particulars of active release techniques. technique, but there's— we talked about Rolfing, there's the Feldenkrais technique, which is not as much with a therapist but self-directed, and these are really great. There's even exercises, Pilates is really good. We know yoga can be really good. And there's something called Gyrotonic that is an immune-enhancing, anti-inflammatory type of workout. So you kind of— I don't know if you've seen recently, but Tom Brady has really gone out there and said that everybody is exercising wrong. for the most part, and he's extending his career using some of these type of techniques that really have an Eastern background. So whether it's ART or one of these others, getting bodywork is really, really valuable and a self-directed program of movement. One thing we're doing, and I'm not sure I do it exactly right, but I'm doing footwork now using various foot pods or foot wakers as they're called.

Oh, wow.

Because, you know, on the reflex, there's so many The nerve endings on your feet. So your colon, your feet, all that. So doing something like ART is great. And again, I'll defer to you on the particulars.

Yeah, I've had ART in the past and essentially it's where they're doing a muscle release. So they're going in and doing deep tissue massage but while you're in active motion. And so what they're doing is they're actually hitting on the entire part of the muscle, not just one point, but they're actually doing it in its active range of motion which allows you to hit more fibers. So it can be greatly beneficial. So again, a lot of bodywork is great. ART is one that I've used and seen great results with. So you might check that out in terms of a deep tissue body therapy. The next thing we have up here is something I've had done as well as my wife Chelsea. It's called PRP. It's platelet-rich plasma. Now, this is something you mentioned professional athletes, Peyton Manning and Tiger Woods and a lot of NFL players get this done on a regular basis. Regular basis. And this really is using your body's own blood to support your own tissue repair. And so if you think about it, if you tear your rotator cuff in your shoulder, your body heals some of the area, but sometimes it can't heal all of it and you can be left there with a tear in your labrum or an AC joint or some sort of ligamentous tear in your shoulder. Well, what people are doing today is they're going and having their own blood drawn They're concentrating it down to just the platelets, which is about 6% of your blood. And your body's platelets are where all of your growth and healing factors are in your blood. And what they're doing is they're drawing their blood and going to that site of an old injury, reinjecting it with these growth factors, and it's actually able to repair and heal that damaged joint or tissue. So if you're a person that has a past history of a rotator cuff tear, an ACL injury, injury, that's a partial tear in your knee, even things with like arthritis or disc injuries or any type of chronic pain, you may consider doing something like PRP. It's platelet-rich plasma. And it's sort of another thing they oftentimes do now, Jordan, along with PRP is called stem cell therapy. They actually take your body's stem cells, which can be even more powerful than your blood at helping repair damaged tissues. And if you're looking for a practitioner or someone to help, There's a great company I love called Regenexx, it's R-G-E-N-E-X-X, you can check them out. But PRP is great as well. And then Jordan, dry needling.

I'm going to leave that to you.

Okay, I'll talk about that as well.

These are Josh's secret therapies, but all of these would be called alternative medicine. But the truth is top athletes and cutting-edge research points to these as being much more safe and soon they're going to be integrated everywhere. You know, it's amazing that Athletes a lot of times have their own chiropractor. They have their own massage therapist. They get acupuncture, which we don't have on here. I know we're going to talk a little bit about that. And the truth is these need to be looked at. Athletes need to perform every day. They have the resources to do it. So we're learning a lot of how athletes keep their bodies to perform to use for the regular folks such as us.

Absolutely. Well, I'll touch on this one here, Jordan, and then I'll have you punch the last 3 here. So with dry needling, dry needling is where— this is done by acupuncturists years ago, forms of it. Today, there are actually other trainers and people that will specifically do dry needling. But essentially, it's doing a similar thing. This is best for trigger points or one of the best things. If you're a person that gets chronic trigger points in your neck, in your shoulders, or your muscles, dry needling, you can go in and it just causes the muscle to release and relax. Oftentimes, it increases blood flow to the area. So it really uses your body's own healing mechanism to heal the area. So that's really the way dry needling works. So Jordan, talk to us about infrared therapy. I know that's something you've personally used.

Absolutely. Infrared therapy, which is typically now practiced with infrared saunas, is really great and there's good studies on pain relief. And in fact, infrared radiation, which is healthy radiation by the way, it's what they use in incubators. It can go about an inch deep, sometimes just a centimeter, but it is not simply heating, it is actually driving some of these healing rays into your body. And so, if you've got sore joints, etc., it's a great thing to do and helps you detoxify some of the excess sodium and some of the excess compounds. When you do infrared therapy, particularly if heat is involved, you're losing heavy metals, you're excreting some of those things, which is really, really great.

Yeah.

I use an infrared sauna. In Florida, I have a really nice cabinet one. Here, I've just got a little sort of portable one that my 4-year-old calls daddy's car seat. It sort of looks like a 3-dimensional postage stamp. But there are some great and affordable infrared saunas. There's also infrared mats that you can lay on or sleep on.

Oh, yeah.

So look into far infrared therapy. You'll be glad you did. And hydrotherapy is pretty similar. This is really affordable. Back in the old day, and this might sound cruel. People would go to these clinics in Germany, these spa clinics, and people that were in wheelchairs that were really sick, one of the treatments was to dump a big bucket of ice and water on their head, like on their body.

Wow, yeah.

What it does, similar to chili pepper, is it sort of shocks your body into making a lot of anti-inflammatory compounds. It's some of those people who are polar bears that go swimming in freezing water in the winter. But hydrotherapy is using water to heal. There's things such as a Kneipp water bath. Which is really cool. Germany is the pioneer, in my mind, of a lot of these hydrotherapies. Simple thing you can do at home, hot-cold shower. Turn your shower to as warm a stream as you can handle and try to get it to be on the area of pain. But even if you do it for your whole body, for 1 minute as warm as you can handle, then turn it as cold as you can handle, which is just all the way, right? Because cold isn't going to hurt anybody.

Yeah.

It's amazing when you do that for a cycle of 6. Hot, cold, repeat 6 times. The hot feels cold, the cold feels hot. On my first skiing trip, I was in a hot tub in Vail and then I would jump in the snow with just my swim trunks on and make a snow angel, then I jump back in the hot tub. Hot felt cold, cold felt hot, but you are invigorated. So hydrotherapy can be done in your shower. It is really, really great to release some of the stored-up stress. It's great to release muscles and it's so affordable, anyone can do it. It's good for the immune system too.

Yeah, awesome.

And last but not least, cryotherapy. This is similar, but it's taking it all the way. There are places now that facilitate cryotherapy, which is really you're freezing yourself.

Yeah.

And so, if you look up cryotherapy online, you'll see celebrities are doing it to feel better but also to look younger. You want to go to a place that has really good ratings, but this is essentially causing your body to adapt to the cold and create lots of compounds that it normally wouldn't in a safe controlled environment. And we mentioned also, there are things that we left out, systemic or proteolytic enzymes, getting your vitamin D levels right, getting sunshine is great for pain.

Yeah.

Walking on the beach or walking barefoot or swimming. There are so many amazing ways to release and reduce chronic pain. But if you take a look at this board, folks, if you're suffering from migraines, back pain, knee pain, a lot of folks who even played sports on the high school level, have old injuries. These 14 secrets to relieve and reduce chronic pain can not only help you get out of pain but can help avoid those horrible side effects that prescription painkillers are causing, and they are rampant. The users of NSAIDs, tens of millions. The users of opioid-controlled substances, narcotics, massive. There's addiction, there's bleeding, there's a reduction in motility. All of that can be avoided and you can remove the pain by practicing these 14 secrets plus, plus, plus. This is great information.

Yeah, absolutely. You know, this is something where many of you guys want to start applying this now. And some of you, maybe you don't have chronic pain now, but you know somebody who needs to hear this information or, hey, you never know in the future. Everybody at some point starts having chronic pain here, there, and somewhere. So, you know, you can lock up this information and use it when needed. As we've talked about every single episode, there are so many people that need to hear this. So we just want to say thank you to all of you that have clicked that share button here today and helped spread the message. There are millions suffering. We know that using food and herbs and supplements and these natural treatments as real ancient medicine can help transform the health of the world. And remember, every single day, we're going to be sharing new information. Monday through Friday, 10:30 a.m. Central Standard Time, we are coming to you live. So again, stay tuned or tune in this Monday. We'll be back at 10:30 a.m. We hope you guys have a great week. Remember, food is medicine. This has been Jordan Rubin, myself, Dr. Josh Axe. Have a good weekend. We'll see you Monday.

Bye.