SLEEP AND PAIN: NON-MEDICATION CURES FOR INSOMNIA

Exercise Vigorous physical exercise in the afternoon or early evening (not too close to bedtime) has been shown to increase the portion of time spent in the deepest stages of sleep. You may not sleep more but you may well sleep better after exercise.

Schedule Set the same time for sleep each night and stick to it rigidly. It may help to prepare yourself for bed with a bed-time ritual, such as a bath, a glass of milk, etc., at the same time each night.

You should also set a wakeup time and stick to this, no matter how little you slept that previous night. It is very tempting to sleep in when you’ve been awake half the night, but this only increases the chances you won’t sleep the next night.

Naps These usually increase the problem of insomnia. They should generally be avoided by those with insomnia until their sleep has become regulated. On the other hand, a twenty minute period of napping, relaxation, meditation or yoga can help reduce the tensions, pain and discomfort of the day for many, and can enable them to resume tasks with renewed energy.

Stimulants No coffee or tea after the evening meal. You should also avoid chocolate or caffeine containing soft drinks until you have assessed their role in keeping you awake. Proprietary soft drinks such as CocaCola and TAB contain amounts of caffeine sufficient to interfere with sleep in those with insomnia.

Don’t fight it Many people drive themselves into an absolute frenzy — rolling and tossing all night in a largely futile attempt to force themselves into sleep. It may help to make a rule for yourself that if you are not asleep within 15 minutes, leave the room and do something restful.

Reading, knitting, doing jigsaw puzzles or listening to quiet music are all useful but, should always be done outside the bedroom. Loud music, exciting television programmes or suspenseful books should be avoided because they increase the level of mental arousal and consequent adrenaline production. They may also be hard to leave.

When you feel the slightest amount of drowsiness return to your bed. If you are not asleep within 15 minutes get up and leave the bedroom again.

Bedroom* are for sleeping And loving. Nothing else. Using the room for paying bills, doing homework or arguing can prevent the room from being a comfortable refuge in which you automatically relax.

Avoid habituating drugs Wherever possible avoid those drugs which are potentially addictive. This is more difficult for those with chronic pain who are offered barbiturates containing medications such as Nembudeine by doctors who still believe that they are safe. Nembudeine is one of the few drugs containing barbiturates available in Australia.

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SOME POINTS OF SPECIFIC PAIN CONTROL TECHNIQUES

• You can be asked under the hypnotic state to imagine going backward in time ‘to a time long ago, before any pain or discomfort, when you were full of energy and had a sense of complete well-being — and, when you return to the normal waking state, you will feel again that same sense of well-being. ‘ Hypnotic distortion of time can be used either to lengthen periods of discomfort or to apparently shorten periods of intense pain: ‘As a result of your new capacity to relax, time will now seem to fly whenever you experience periods of intense pain. On the other hand, time will move very slowly indeed with every second stretching out so that you can enjoy those periods when discomfort is at a minimum and so use them as positively as possible.’

• Other techniques involve asking you to transform your pain into a visual image that can be manipulated in the imagination. ‘Now see your pain. What shape is it? A triangle? A circle? Perhaps a pyramid or a cube? See its colour? Is it red? Yellow? Purple? Perhaps another colour? Now change the shape and colour. The new shape and colour are definitely not compatible with your pain.

Or the red balloon image: ‘Imagine you’re out in an open green field somewhere. It’s a beautiful day. The sky is a brilliant blue. Wisps of fleecy clouds drift lazily by. Near you, tethered by a rope attached to a peg on the ground, is a large red, helium-filled balloon. There’s a large wicker basket hanging beneath it. Now, imagine that you’re loading into the basket all of your pain and discomfort. You now free the balloon from its peg, allowing it to float into the air. See how vivid the rising red balloon looks against the blue sky.

The balloon is disappearing with all of your pain and discomfort.’

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NEUROSURGERY: UNNECESSARY PROCEDURES

The implantation of spinal stimulators and even deep brain stimulators are examples of the merging of technology and that most sophisticated of neurochemical devices — the human brain and nervous system.

However, all too often patients are subjected to unnecessary and sometimes harmful procedures because pain is still thought of in a very simplistic way. In some cases the operation is done technically with brilliance but still fails to resolve the suffering. It must always be remembered that surgery once performed is difficult to reverse.

Neurosurgeons may be involved in the treatment of such difficult pain conditions as phantom limb pain, trigeminal neuralgia and central pain following strokes.

The major involvement of neurosurgeons together with anaesthetists at pain clinics is to perform nerve blocks — or to cut nerve pathways when there is no other choice. In many cases, patients obtain temporary pain relief. With the onset or recurrence of pain six months later, the problem is again posed as what to do to help such patients.

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MEDICATION IN USE OF PAIN TREATMENT: ANTI-EPILEPTIC MEDICATIONS

Anti-epileptic drugs have been consistently used over the past twenty years, particularly for the treatment of facial pain.

The most severe cause of facial pain is trigeminal neuralgia. The more commonly used anti-epileptic medications such as Dilantin and Tegretol have been found to be useful in treating this painful condition and also the pain associated with shingles.

Rivotril, which was included in the minor tranquilliser group, is more commonly used as an anti-epileptic drug.

These medications have been used successfully in many of the painful states associated with nerve damage, such as RSI and the central pain that sometimes follows ‘strokes’ (cerebrovascular accidents). Central pain is thought to be due to the damage to the normal pain control centres in the brain and the brainstem.

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FOOD INTOLERANCE: MENTAL SYMPTOMS

In general, mental disorders are much more likely to be caused by emotional or social problems than by foods. Where they are a result of food intolerance, there will usually be physical symptoms as well, although a few patients have mental symptoms only:

The mental symptoms most often mentioned in connection with food intolerance are anxiety and depression – often accompanied by excessive fatigue. Other minor symptoms that are reported include dizziness, confusion, tension, ‘nervousness’, insomnia, emotional instability, mental exhaustion, sleepiness, lack of concentration and memory lapses. In children there may be various mental and behavioural problems that are described as the ‘hyperkinetic syndrome’.

The possibility of hyperventilation should always be kept in mind, where there are minor mental symptoms – see pl55 for further details. Finally, Candida overgrowth can cause lethargy and depression.

The eyes, nose, throat and lungs Red, itchy or watery eyes

Assuming there is no infection causing these symptoms, then the most likely explanation is sensitivity to airborne allergens. Occasionally, however, food sensitivity can produce symptoms in the eye, or along the margins of the eyelids.

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THE AWAKENING OF GRATITUDE

You are tired and decide to go to your bedroom. There is your bed in front of you. It is cold outside but you have a roof over your head and own many other things that millions do not have at all. You remember the pictures you have seen, pictures of refugees with nothing but the clothes on their backs. You still have it quite good. So why be sad? How many people go on living without a bed, or even a room, of their own. Poor people, herded together somewhere in the world, feeling cold and afraid, hungry people with no way out of their predicament – these thoughts cause you to reflect on what you have and can be grateful for. It is wrong to take everything for granted. Indeed, even the air you breathe suddenly appears to be worthy of gratitude and so does the peace and quiet around you. You feel it surging through you with a warming kind of joy and you go to bed feeling content.

You are still alone, your family has not come in yet, and they cannot know what has gone on in your heart and mind. You pull up your blanket, still deep in thought, comfortable in the calmness surrounding you. You fall into a sleep that has not been so good and restful for a long time – and all because of those moments of peace and quiet, solitude and gratitude you had enjoyed before closing your eyes. The healing powers at our disposal would make our stressful times much more endurable if only we could recognise and use them.

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TAKING HEALTH INTO CONSIDERATION WHEN BUILDING A HOUSE – SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH AND SUBSEQUENT DISCOVERIES

Watching animals in their habitat can help you appreciate this point. You will notice how careful they are in choosing a spot where they want to spend the night, and where they intend to build their burrows, nests or whatever. You will never see wild deer choose wet and marshy ground to sleep on. No fox or marmot will built its den in wet marshland. Even dogs and cats are often quite choosy when it comes to selecting a place to sleep if given the opportunity. A dog will not stretch out on a concrete floor, even though it may provide a cool spot on a hot day.

Exhaustive scientific research and subsequent discoveries have brought to light many aspects of bioclimatics, electromagnetic waves, electric fields and other things that sensitive persons have always experienced reactions to but had no plausible explanation for. Our ancestors based their approach on experience and observation, taking into account many of these things even though they probably knew nothing of their exact nature. We still do not have all the explanations, but modern technology and science have come up with many a revelation that years ago had been perceived instinctively or intuitively, or simply on the basis of supposition.

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MISCELLANEOUS TOPICS – CORRECT DOSAGE (PART 2)

We can see, therefore, that the intake of the miracle substance iodine has to be measured carefully, for both deficiency and excess mean trouble. Thus, to avoid harm, it is imperative to give iodine only in high potencies of homoeopathic dilution.

Some years ago, since the Swiss and the inhabitants of other land-locked countries often displayed signs of iodine deficiency, Dr Eggenberger from Herisau, a noted goitre specialist, supported the idea of adding iodine to common salt. This was meant to help those people in Switzerland who tended toward goitre, but it caused those with a tendency to Graves’ disease having to put up with an increased heart beat and other unpleasant side effects.

Sea salt and sea water both contain iodine, and for many people these can have the effect of a specific medicine. But those who have a predisposition towards Graves’ disease will find it better to take the small amounts of iodine found in plants, which will give them no trouble.

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WHOLE WHEAT AND OTHER CEREALS – WHEAT GERM (VITAMIN E)

Provided there is no physical disability, vitamin E often acts as an aid to conception when a woman eats foods rich in this vitamin. Due to its high content of vitamin E, wheat germ is the single most indicated item for this therapy. Every 100 g (4 oz) of wheat germ contain as much as 30 mg of pure vitamin E.

Wheat germ is one of the best remedies that can be recommended to help overcome a tendency to premature birth. In fact, if pregnant women were to eat sufficient wheat germ or take wheat germ oil capsules, the painful experience of miscarriage could often be prevented.

Brucellosis (undulant fever, Bang’s disease) has been successfully treated with vitamin E preparations and there is no better specific remedy than wheat germ and wheat germ oil for this purpose. For years, farmers have observed that feeding their cattle with good bran, which contains wheat germ, reduces the incidence of brucellosis and abortion. The results of experiments in which cattle suffering from brucellosis were fed with wheat germ have confirmed that sufficient quantities of vitamin E in time enable the body to build up resistance to the germs which cause this disease.

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VITAMINS – VITAMIN E – THE FERTILITY VITAMIN (HISTORY)

The Roman gladiators had no idea about hormones and vitamin E, but they knew from experience that they became more energetic and efficient when they ate bulls’ testicles the day before their contests. No doubt it needed clear thinking and some degree of biological understanding to come to this conclusion. Not infrequently it was mere chance, an acute observation or clear and logical thinking that led to discoveries that serve us today in our quest to rectify errors in nutrition that plague us in the form of deficiency diseases and avitaminoses.

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