Bromelain is an enzyme that is derived from pineapples.  It is my favorite natural pain reliever.  Often, with just one pill a minor ache or pain is gone.  If it is severe pain, you might need other supplements like boswellin and glucosamine.

Enzymes are substances that dissolve things.  Your body makes enzymes to digest your food.  It also makes enzymes to heal you.  When you have extra enzymes after digesting your food, your body uses those enzymes for cellular repair.

The problem is when you do not have any extra enzymes.  As we age, our bodies produce fewer enzymes.  That is one reason why he have more aches and pains as we age.

When you eat things that require a lot of digestive enzymes, your body does not have enough enzymes to heal you and clean up scar tissue.  If you take oral enzymes such as bromelain, your body can use it to treat pain and inflammation.

If you eat canned pineapple, it will not work.  Canned pineapple is cooked and all the enzymes are killed.  You can either take fresh pineapple or pineapple juice.

Be aware that if you eat a lot of raw pineapple, the enzymes in it will start to dissolve your tongue coating.  Some people think they allergic to pineapple because they have tongue pain after eating it.  The bromelain enzyme is very strong and starts to act as you are chewing it.  I find it easier to just take a bromelain tablet.  It is a very inexpensive way to treat pain.

You can buy enzyme formulations for pain that include bromelain in them, they are also effective.  In fact, I have had systemic enzymes work for pain that did not resolve with other things.

You can also take extra enzymes to help digest your food.  If you take enzymes on an empty stomach, they go into your bloodstream and are used to treat pain.  If you take them with food, they are used to help digest your food and whatever is left over will be used for healing.

Enzymes that are taken on an empty stomach to treat pain and inflammation are called systemic enzymes.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease.  It is when the body is attacking itself.  It can be helped with supplements, just like any other type of pain, but it is more serious.

I have done a lot of research on autoimmune diseases.  What follows is my opinion.

I believe that autoimmune diseases are in a large part caused by leaky gut.  Leaky gut is when your intestinal wall is too porous.  Normally, only very small molecules are allowed to pass through the wall.  If your intestinal lining is damaged, larger molecules pass through.

The analogy is that a piece of steak is floating around in your blood stream.  The food has not been completely digested and it is floating around in your blood.

Your body attacks the food that is not digested.  That is a normal immune response.  Your body is trying to protect you.

It protects you by launching an immune attack on the food particles.  The problem lies in where the food particles go, after floating around in your blood stream.  Some people believe that the body attacks itself at the weakest area.  If you had damage to your thyroid, it will attack your thyroid.  If you had knee damage, the immune system tends to attack that.

I can tell you that I have Hashimoto’s thyroiditis.  I trace the start of this disease from when I had a dental issue a long time ago and took medication for the pain on an almost empty stomach.  I ended up with gastritis.  Not too long after that I started having globus hystericus.  That is when you feel like you are being choked.  You feel something is caught in your throat.  You cannot spit it up or swallow it.  That is your thyroid swelling up from the autoimmune attack.

I believe once you get the autoimmune disease, you will always have to be careful what you eat and what medications you take.  You must treat the inside of the body to be well.

Glutamine powder can be taken to heal the intestinal wall.  You might become allergic to everything you eat.  That is because when you eat something and it is not totally digested, these food particles float around in your blood stream and your body recognizes it as an enemy.  The next time you eat it, you react a lot more strongly.  Gluten is an example of this.

Gluten can also cause leaky gut.  It does this by irritating the intestinal lining.  If you are sensitive to gluten, it can irritate your intestines and inflame them.  They then become leaky.

This is a very complicated problem.  I just wanted to touch on it here.  If you do not know the cause of the problem, you cannot fix it.

You can find a lot of information about leaky gut.  It is complicated, but once you work through it, I think it will make sense.

Some of my favorite information is:

http://www.liverdoctor.com/index.php?page=liver-problems&subpage=leaky-gut

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2012/01/21/grains-causing-gut-leaks.aspx

http://www.intestinalbarriertest.com/

Another possible cause of leaky gut is Candida.  An overgrowth of candida can bore down into your intestines.  A lack of good bacteria can also make your intestines more likely to be inflamed and become leaky.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjdFEYV_PIk

This image shows how leaky gut can cause autoimmune diseases.  I think it also causes a lot of asthma in babies.

When you run, you put a lot of pressure on your knees.  This high level of friction can cause inflammation and pain.  Even a low level of inflammation and swelling can cause pain after running.

If you have knee pain, you might consider taking some natural remedies such as bromelain before you run.  It can help to heal the underlying inflammation and damage in your knee.

Glucosamine sulfate can be used to both help rebuild connective tissue, as well as it is a natural anti-inflammatory.  If you have joint pain, I would assume you might have damage to the connective tissue that cushions the joint.  That is what glucosamine sulfate and chondroitin sulfate address.  They help to rebuild connective tissue.

If you have knee pain, you can take glucosamine sulfate and other remedies for a few months.  It takes a while for your knee tissue to heal.  It does not have a lot of good blood flow to heal quickly like other areas of your body.  Acupuncture can quickly improve the blood flow, as well as other natural remedies such as rubbing Boswellin cream on your knee and taking bromelain.

Inflammation caused by running will take a little time to heal.  If you are prone to inflammation, you might need to consider taking natural remedies like bromelain to prevent the inflammation that the friction can cause.

The key thing to remember, is that it takes a while to heal joint tissue.  I tend to use several remedies at the same time, so the result is faster.  For example, using:

• Bromelain
• Joint Advantage Gold or Jarrow Glucosamine sulfate
• Boswellin cream

The more aggressive you are, the more underlying issues you are addressing.  I’m not one to want to know for sure what fixed the pain, I just want fast relief.

A lot of medical doctors recommend ice therapy.  The idea behind that is that the ice will stop the swelling.  It constricts the blood flow by slowing it down.

When you are injured, even from walking or running, your body sends inflammation into the area to heal it.  The inflammation includes some swelling.  Some people recommend using ice application to reduce swelling.

In Chinese medicine theory, you do NOT apply ice to anything.  What you need to treat pain is better circulation, not a blockage of blood flow from ice.

The application of ice right after an injury can prevent some swelling from occurring, however, some studies show there is a rebound effect.  Your body fights against things that try to make it do the opposite of what is natural.  Applying ice is not really natural.

Instead of ice therapy, you could try rubbing Boswellin cream on your knee.  The faster you start therapy, the less damage will be done.  If you take herbs and natural supplements soon after injury, they will also help you from getting a lot of fluid build up that the body then has to get rid of.

This is all just Chinese medicine theory.  The main objective is to reduce swelling and pain.  Temporary application of ice seems to be counter-intuitive.

Natural remedies work WITH your normal body function.  They do not fight your body, they work with it.

Remember, there was a time when the earth was flat.  It takes a long time for people to give up strong beliefs.  Also, there was a time when medical doctors refused to wash their hands between patients.  They denied that it was unhealthy.

This is my opinion.  Please consult your health care practitioner for what might be most effective for your situation.

Some people think that they have knee pain because they are getting older.  They believe that aches and pain are a natural part of aging.

You are more likely to have pain when you are older, because your body does not heal as quickly and you can become deficient in certain nutrients and enzymes.

However, old age is not causing your knee pain.  If you have knee pain that is caused by simple aging, then everyone your age would have the exact same knee pain! 

As we get older, we are more likely to get inflammation.  Our bodies do not produce enough of the healing enzymes that our body needs for cellular repair.

Just because you are more likely to have aches and pains does not mean you need to keep them.  There are many natural options for pain relief.

By using natural remedies, you can replace some of the things you lose as you age.

I don’t think you are alone if you think that aging is causing your knee pain or any other kind of pain.  When medical doctors don’t know how to help you, they sometimes say it is caused by:

• Aging
• Overweight
• Something you ate

You can be 80 and have no knee pain.  You can weight 300 pounds and have no knee pain.  That is not to discount the impact these things have on you, but it seems to me to be an incorrect assumption.

Boswellin cream is one of my favorite topical pain relievers.  Boswellin is an herb that has been used for inflammation and pain for centuries.  The other name for it is Frankincense.  Frankincense and myrrh were even mentioned in the bible as being valuable.

It is a Chinese herb that is considered to be a ‘blood mover”.  When you have pain, you have blocked circulation.  It is as simple as that.  When you improve circulation, you will relieve pain.

I have found Boswellin cream to be very fast acting.  It can be used just about anywhere on your body and it is about $10 a tube.  The cream is very thick and should last quite some time.

I have tried a variety of pain patches over the years, but they just do not stay on the knee, because it moves too much.  I normally recommend herbal patches such as Tiger Balm patches to relieve back and neck pain.

There are several brands of Boswellin cream on the market.  The one I use is by Nature’s Herbs.  It is inexpensive and very effective.  You do not need other ingredients to get relief.

Muscle relaxation cannot occur without magnesium.  Your body uses calcium to contract the muscles and magnesium to relax them.  If you are mineral deficient, your muscles will be tighter than they should be.  Tight muscles can make you put more pressure on joints than they were designed to handle.

Mineral deficiencies can also cause your body to be more acidic.  When you do not have enough minerals to buffer the acid in your diet, you are more prone to chronic inflammation.

Migraines also can be caused by magnesium deficiency.  If the muscles in your neck are too tight, you cannot relax.  These tight neck muscles start to pull on the base of the skull, where they are attached.

I have found that about 80% of my migraine patients have tight neck muscles.  I do acupuncture on the area where the muscle attaches and treat the neck and shoulders.  Migraines are very easy to treat with acupuncture, unless there is something going on such as excess alcohol consumption.

Notice the blue circles on the base of the skull.  This is where the muscles attach and the likely area that needs treatment.  The muscles get tight and put pressure on the nerves and blood vessels.  There is not enough blood flow to the head, so it hurts.  Pain is always about a lack of circulation in Chinese medicine theory.

If you are taking calcium by itself, you could suffer health problems.  Your body cannot absorb calcium without magnesium.  The calcium can just float around in your body and attach to things it should not.

I found a great article on magnesium glycinate and all the benefits of taking magnesium:   http://www.purelabvitamins.com/role-of-magnesium.php

Although this site is about knee pain, I wanted people to know how acupuncture and magnesium can relieve migraines.

Inflammation is caused by trauma to the area.  The trauma can be from just walking all day and having an underlying tendency to get an inflammation.  Our bodies use inflammation to heal.  It is a natural process, the problem is when the inflammation does not stop.

Chronic inflammation can be caused by magnesium, vitamin or enzyme deficiencies.  Your body needs nutrients to heal itself.  Taking glucosamine, bromelain and rubbing Boswellin cream on your knee are usually enough to treat this problem.

Any type of overuse, such as jumping, or just walking a lot wearing shoes with little arch support, can cause trauma to your body.  Once you have the tissue damage, even if it is small, you need to treat the inflammation that is caused.

Natural remedies are easy to use and do not normally cause side effects.  Glucosamine sulfate will help your body build the tissue back up and also is a natural anti inflammatory.

  Ginger root can be a very effective natural anti-inflammatory.  You will need to take more of this to get relief than you would bromelain, for example, but in a pinch it works.  It also improves your digestion.

Turmeric or curcumin is in the same family as ginger root.  Curcumin is an extract of turmeric spice.  It is a natural anti-inflammatory and is also believed to treat fatty liver.  Many people have livers clogged with fat and do not know it.  This is a multi-purpose herb.

Devil’s claw has been used for arthritis for centuries.  It is called devil’s claw because it looks like a claw.

Boswellin is also called Frankincense.  It is a resin that has been used for pain relief for centuries.  You might remember frankincense and myrrh from the bible.  It is a natural anti-inflammatory and pain reliever.  It is also used in Chinese medicine to relieve pain.

Glucosamine sulfate can be very effective to heal inflamed and damaged joints.  The trick is to use the right kind.  There are two common types of glucosamine, glucosamine Sulfate and glucosamine HCL.

Glucosamine sulfate is derived from shrimp, but it is considered to be the most effective type.  Glucosamine HCL does not work for some people, but if you are allergic to shellfish, please be aware.

Glucosamine is a natural anti-inflammatory.  You can sometimes find relief within a few hours.  Many people have so much tissue damage and inflammation that it takes a lot longer to get relief.  That is where the herbs come in.

If you take glucosamine sulfate alone, it will probably take a long time to feel a difference.  It takes some time to rebuild the connective tissue in your body.  Also, you might have several locations of connective tissue damage, such as back pain, neck pain, etc.