to take or not to take (aspirin)

[donq]

Hi everyone,

I used to think any painkillers were bad, though I myself had to take it so that I could stop any Ergot drugs for my (decades) migraine. I thought painkillers would mess with and just numb my brain. Like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand so that it cannot see the danger coming.
Anyway, I found the following video on Youtube. It was so good. As one comment said, "an anesthesiologist Trainee, I've seen a lot of pain pathway explanations, but this one is by far the simplest and best".



So, painkiller (aspirin etc.) doesn't mess with your brain, just cut the pass way from the area we feel pain to our brains.

Anyway, life, and in our case, is not that simple. Sometimes, many times, both painkillers and any medicinal drugs don't work as they used to.

Below is the excellent example to show that pain mechanism is so complex. It's rather long, but it's worth your reading, believe me.

A Swiss Army Officer

A forty-three-year-old reserve major, described by his wife as tough and taciturn, was skiing with his squad in the Upper Engadine region of Switzerland when a snow bridge collapsed below him. He remembers free falling into a crevasse with ice walls in front and behind, and scraping down one wall. With a tremendous crash and thump, he found himself wedged firmly in the ice crack. One arm was jammed above his head and he could not move his legs. He remembers hearing his gun and ski poles rattling down below, deeper into the crevasse. He was winded but was surprised to feel no pain whatsoever. He looked up and saw his men peering over the brink, and called out that he was all right but could not move.

A man was lowered down to him on a line and put a sling around him. The men above hauled on the ropes, and he remembers his relief on feeling himself swaying free. They carried him down to an open area and radioed for a helicopter, which arrived after twenty-five minutes. His men were unusually quiet and subdued, in contrast to their normal boisterous behavior. He recalls feeling ashamed, as he had lectured on how to avoid such accidents. He wondered what this would do to his chances of promotion, and discussed this with the sergeant, who tried to cheer him up. During all this time, he recalls no trace of pain, either when he hit the ice slot or during his rescue.

He was strapped onto a stretcher and the helicopter took off. Just then, some forty-five minutes after his fall, a searing pain started in his left shoulder and spread to his neck and chest. He cried out. A crew member gave him a subcutaneous injection of fifteen milligrams of the narcotic morphine from the standard equipment in the emergency kit. By the time they arrived in hospital, he was dozy and the pain had lessened.

In the hospital, it was found that he had a dislocated left shoulder, a broken left collar bone, and serious bruises over his pelvis and upper legs. He was briefly anesthetized, and the shoulder bones were put in their proper place. He was put to bed and slept. Next morning, his shoulder ached all the time and he felt severe stabs of pain if he moved. He was sore all over, and was given painkillers. He felt exhausted and dozed for long periods. When the doctors came on their routine ward round, his pain escalated as they uncovered him and he cried out when they gently touched his shoulder. For the rest of the day, he curled up, moving as little as possible. He wanted no food. When visitors came, he put on his standard act: “Nothing to it,” “Just a bit of a fall,” and “I’ll be out of here in a day or two.” Within himself, he wished they would go away and leave him alone.

This history has two clear epochs. In the first emergency period of forty-five minutes, where survival, escape, and rescue had clear priority, there was injury but no pain. He was mentally clear and supervising his own rescue. Furthermore, he was assessing the situation clearly but blaming himself and fearing for the future. In the second period, when pain began, recovery from the injury had priority. Pain was present and increased with movement or touch. Beyond the presence of pain, his usual character had changed: normally a very active man, he was overwhelmed by lethargy and fatigue; usually a good eater, he had no appetite; habitually gregarious, he disliked company, although verbally he put on a very good act in imitating his old self. Within himself, he displayed the complete syndrome of the best tactics for recovery in people or animals: don’t move, and don’t let anyone else move you, just sleep. Outside himself, he displayed the opposite, for the benefit of other people and for his own image: “I’m all right,” “Soon be out,” “Don’t worry,” “It only hurts when I laugh.”
-from "Pain : the science of suffering" by Patrick Wall

As this is a spiritual forum, you know I don't mean only physical pain, right?

[donq]

"Have you ever wondered why you might feel open and generous one minute and feel anxious and critical the next? Why a pain in your leg pounds one minute and feels as if it is gone the next? The biggest factor in these kinds of changes is a spontaneous, unconscious shift in your style of attention. Pain, moods, and emotions are changed by shifts in attention all the time, but we usually don’t realize it.

"...why is the manner in which we form and direct our awareness so vital? Because certain kinds of attention quickly cause a widespread change in our physiology, including the dissolution of physical and emotional stress. Many therapies or relaxation techniques, from massage to tai chi to listening to music, produce positive results that succeed, at least in part, because they bring about a shift in attention. Even watching a movie can make us feel better because it shifts our attention. Attention, I believe, is the primary and most powerful factor in all types of relaxation."

-from "Dissolving pain: simple brain-training exercises for overcoming chronic pain" by Les Fehmi and Jim Robbins

Felix Mann, an expert on scientific acupuncture, once said that even when you insert a needle at the wrong acu-points, it still works somehow. Or some medical research reported that the patient already felt better even "before" the doctor was going to insert his needles.
This is not to mention about The placebo (positive) effect and the Nocebo (negative) effect, just because they (unconsciously) believe so.
I read somewhere that all kinds of alternative medicines have something to do with these patients' beliefs, including hypnosis.

As for medical hypnosis, let me quote Dr. Milton H. Erickson here:

Someone once asked, "Dr. Erickson. why do you use hypnosis, and what is hypnosis?" Erickson replied (paraphrasing here), "The hypnotic state is a state in which the client pays attention to what is really, immediately important, and disregards information that isn't immediately important. In an hypnotic state, you may not be aware of your right foot, you may not be aware of your right arm, or that you're wearing a watch. You can just forget about that. You can forget about your left arm, You can forget about what you had for breakfast. You can forget about anything that is up here on the board while you're listening to what I'm saying. What's important about the hypnotic trance is that you're capable of paying attention to what is immediately important so that you can access memories and resources that you have long since forgotten.
"All hypnosis is, is a loss of the multiplicity of the foci of attention.
"It [hypnosis] is a lack of response to irrelevant external stimuli.
"Trance is a focusing on one thing...dropping all the peripheral foci and narrowing it down to one focus."

.............................

If we consider all of what were said above, it seems that whenever we feel pain, our attention is narrowed down to only our pain. Yes, this also includes mental pain. There are spiritual words for this, for example, "click to" and "not let go" etc.
It seems distraction (from our pains) plays a very important part in any kind of healing. But how? As it seems to be beyond our command/control. I believe we have to focus on something else instead. The more we could change our focus/attention to something else, the more we could dissolve our pain.

Here, we know that meditation, mindfulness, etc. have great roles in both our physical and mental health. Though sometimes, many times, those spiritual practices could not sooth our pain, at least, we would not add more pain to the ones we already have. And that's the very key to the healing process, isn't it?

Take care, everyone.

[gruntal]

I do take a small amount of aspirin once a day to prolong my life. You might call that an addiction but actually the problem is I don't enjoy aspirin at all. So I feel better skipping it at the risk of getting a stroke or heart attack.

If an addiction does make you feel good it follows if you skip that your emotions take a serious dive. That incapacitates you.

I guess that is the ultimate dilemma. Is there something helping or hindering you?

That works on many levels.

[donq]

Hi George,

Long time, so see. Glad to see you here again. Hope you doing well.

When I was a kid, I went to a temple (county) fair (where there were ferris wheel, roundabout etc.), I recall that I saw a peddler extracted a worm from displayed teeth, to sell his (fraud) pills, of course. But it made me believe for years that the cause of my toothache was really those worms!
Even a king was a victim of those fault beliefs. King Charles II suffered a sudden seizure on the morning of 2 February 1685, his personal physician had just the remedy. He quickly slashed open a vein in the king’s left arm and filled a basin with the royal blood. Hence bloodletting.
I always wonder if what's called "right and modern medicine" today will not become barbarian ones in the next decades?

Agree with you about an addiction. Some medical writers said if you took aspirin for your headache for too long, it could also be the cause of your headache. Sometimes, drinking coffee can alleviate your headache, but it also can trigger your headache if you drink it too much for too long.
However, it seems people who are in pain, the real ones, don't care much about those side effects or addictions. I read somewhere that someone even swallowed a cockroach, after his friend told him it could soothe his asthma! And he already tried everything else.
Anyway, sometimes, the solution seems to be so simple.
Most of us know that constipation is caused by eating less fiber. But why just leaning forward more or bending your knees more toward your chest while sitting on your toilet proves to be more than helpful?
Once a (car) mechanic told me about a case that after checking everything, there was nothing wrong with the clutch. It turned out that the car's owner was a woman. She sometimes took off her shoe while driving (didn't do that every time). So the solution was just adjusting her seat forward so that her feet could reach the clutch more comfortably. Simple as that.