It is recommended to reduce pain. However, according to Drugs.com, it can make you have diarrhea, increased sweating, loss of appetite, nausea or vomiting, stomach cramps or pain, swelling, pain, or tenderness in the upper abdomen or stomach area and anxiety. If that’s not enough, a study reported on CNN.com on April 15, 2015 indicates that acetaminophen, commonly marketed as Tylenol, reduces your pleasure.
Maintaining a good state of mind underpins our ability to heal from pain and disease. It appears that unsuspecting patients who trust their medical doctors’ advice that acetaminophen is safe, and get tied up with Tylenol, risk losing this important mental factor in their ability to recover. Good news for the Pharmaceutical Industrial Complex, because M.D.s could recommend one of the many mood-altering drugs for this.
How many people take Tylenol for their headaches, thinking it harmless, and diminish the quality of their lives by robbing themselves of joy and positive emotions? And how many people have had anti-depressants and mood elevators prescribed to counteract those effects of this pain reliever? And what about the side effects of those anti-depressants and mood elevators, some of which were just tolerated while others invited even more drug therapy? Where does it all end? The human body tends to be a very sturdy machine. However, introducing chemicals into our bloodstreams can take a very heavy toll — sometimes in predictable and measurable ways — and sometimes not.
Polluting the body with pain-killing drugs doesn’t make a person healthier. At best it can provide some short-term relief — but at what cost? These drugs can stress and injure the liver, kidneys and stomach. More importantly, pain killers interfere with the role that pain serves. Pain makes you aware that a problem exists. It motivates you to protect the affected part, get treatment, and know when you have healed. Pain prevents you from moving in ways that would do more damage. Pain killers serve to prevent the brain from comprehending what is going on in the body. By this logic, would you cut the wires to the alarm to put out the fire? What about shifting the way we approach illness and health? It starts with the quality of the questions we ask, because there isn’t a good answer to a bad question. Rather than asking,“What do I need to do to treat this pain?” a better question is,“Why isn’t my body healing itself, and what can I do to help it function and heal better?”The treatment of symptoms with drugs and other modalities may make us feel better temporarily. However, it does nothing to improve our ability to heal ourselves, resist disease and remain healthier.The complexities of human physiology should be respected. It should not be forced by heroic intervention unless all other options have been exhausted.The most innocuous drug still risks consequences. People have been hypnotized to hear the precautions and contraindications without listening to them — if they comprehended the inherent danger they would awaken from this trance and use drugs only when absolutely necessary.
The body’s chemistry is designed to work a certain way, subtle and elegant and precise and resilient. But when it is compromised with a constant influx of toxicity, medical or otherwise, it will create a perfect response to those conditions, and that may mean preserving the most important functions in favor of sacrificing others, until there’s no more room to back up.That leads to bad health, pain and suffering, and disproportionate cost — clearly the wrong direction.
A better direction is to incorporate activities into your lifestyle that build and support health, not disease. Do things that improve your energy and avoid the things that interfere with it. Ask yourself each day, what am I going to do today to improve my health? See what may be missing and what you would like to explore next — eating better, exercise, rest, choosing thoughts that serve you better, and a chiropractic checkup.While there are side effects to taking drugs, in all fairness, there is also a long list of side effects to living vitalistically. Some of these include proper growth, stronger resistance to illness and disease, better performance athletically and academically, a more complete and speedier recovery from injuries and illness, healthier aging and reduced chances of living a painful, restricted, impaired life that leads to an earlier death.
Contact Dr. Ken Freedman, of Freedman Chiropractic Center, by calling 732-254-6011 or emailing [email protected]. The office is located at Brier Hill Court D-6, East Brunswick.