Millions of people suffer from chronic or acute pain every year. The month of September has been declared Pain Awareness Month. Pain Awareness Month is a time when various organizations work to raise public awareness of issues in the area of pain and pain management. For many people, living with pain is a way of life. Living a full and active life while suffering from pain may seem unattainable. It is not impossible though, the key is to have the right skills, support, and direction. That is a tall order in the health care arena these days. Rarely if ever do we get the opportunity to thoroughly talk with our health care providers about our state of being. According to the Institute of Medicine, it costs society $560-$635 billion dollars a year for treatment and loss of productivity at work. Back pain, nerve pain, cancer pain, migraines, or any other number of painful ailments can negatively affect suffers’ quality of life, sometimes on a daily basis. In support of those suffering from pain, we want to educate the public on how people are impacted by pain and what we may be able to do to help them.
Aching For Pain Relief
Musculoskeletal
Musculoskeletal pain is something that people can face after a car accident or a sports injury. Sometimes the usual anti-inflammatory medication may not be enough to get rid of the pain or it may cause some unwanted side effects like upset stomach. Patients can seek out chiropractic care to help with back or neck pain and even headaches. Some supplements that may help with joint and muscle support are our Annie’s Curcumin Complex and SynovX by Xymogen.
Fibromyalgia is one of the most common musculoskeletal conditions characterized by muscle and joint pain and fatigue. This pain can be so crippling that it can lead to depression and isolation. Women are ten times more likely to get this disease than men. Exercise is an encouraged form of therapy for fibromyalgia. A treatment option that may be less well known is the use of the female hormone progesterone. Used topically in a cream, it can be applied to the painful area(s) for pain relief. We can compound a specific strength of progesterone cream or other dosage form just for you with a prescription from your doctor. Progesterone has also been used to help with sleep in these patients. Studies have found that compounded Low Dose Naltrexone (LDN) may help reduce chronic pain in patients with fibromyalgia.
Neuropathic
Many people suffer from diabetic neuropathy and peripheral neuropathy. Nerve pain can be described as a feeling of numbness, tingling, burning pain, or even muscle weakness. Supplementing with certain B vitamins (B12, B6, and B9 (folic acid)) along with Acetyl-l-carnitine, and alpha lipoic acid may help ease nerve pain. Our B Complete contains the entire spectrum of B vitamins. Several commercially available prescription medications used to treat nerve pain may have unwanted side effects such as nausea or vomiting. We can compound a pain cream specific to meet your needs that can be applied topically where it hurts the most, thus bypassing the stomach.
Migraines and headaches can be debilitating. They can be triggered by stress, fatigue, or even certain foods. It is important to keep a log of what you ate or did when the migraines occurred so you can try to avoid those triggers in the future. Supplementing with magnesium and vitamins B6 and B2 may help prevent headaches and migraines or at least decrease the frequency in which they occur. We also offer several compounded medication options, available in transdermal, nasal, oral, and sublingual dosage forms. We can work with you and your healthcare provider to come up with the right option for you.
Several other painful health conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis have been linked to gut health. For instance, leaky gut syndrome is a condition when undigested food particles, bacterial toxins and germs can pass through the gut wall and into the bloodstream. This in turn causes persistent inflammation throughout the body. The human microbiome project has identified the microorganisms which are associated with healthy humans. Changes found in this microbiome can be linked to different disease states. Since the majority of microbes live in the gut they have been linked to several different gastrointestinal diseases such as Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. We offer several pharmaceutical grade supplements like Ig 26 Plus DF, Florabalance Max, and L-Glutamine that may help support overall gut health by assisting in repair of tissue in the gut, boosting the immune system and balancing the microbial environment.
Opioids and other controlled substances prescribed for chronic pain are associated with abuse, addiction, and death, prompting national initiatives to identify safe and effective pain management strategies including topical analgesics. We have helped fund the Optimizing Patient Experience and Response to Topical Analgesics (OPERA) study to observe the changes in pain and concurrent pain medication use following compounded topical analgesic treatment. As seen in the Journal of Pain, OPERA is now a peer-reviewed published study with crucial results on alternative pain management and the fight against the opioid epidemic…Read More>
Let us know if you are not getting adequate relief from your current pain therapy. We’d be happy to talk to you and your healthcare provider about compounded pain creams we can provide, as well as, supplements. We want to help alleviate your pain, so please call us at 830-981-4774, email us or come visit us at Annie’s Apothecary.