I carry a lot of different supplements in my office for treating many different conditions and ailments. Yet 90% of what patients ask for and pick up are natural supports for pain relief. Pain seems to be a big problem these days. A shocking statistic I came across the other day is that opioids are the number one cause of death in folks under 50 in this country. I had been hearing the term “opioid crisis” from various news sources for the last couple of years, but I had no idea that the numbers were that high – pushing 100,000 deaths last year. The establishment reaction to this crisis is to take everyone off opioid pain meds. This is probably more out of fear of litigation than clinical judgment. But the net result is all of a sudden a lot of patients that had been managing their chronic pain issues are suddenly without support.
I have written previously about my new favorite pain killer, CBDs. They serve as a much better alternative to the typical over-the-counter pain killers, as CBDs don’t have the liver-kidney-GI destroying effects that the NSAIDs have. There does not appear to be any toxic upper dose with CBDs, so they are very safe. But there is no doubt that they are not as strong as opiates, so we need several different complimentary approaches to dealing with chronic pain. I used this concept when I formulated my Pain Relief Essential roll-on by using 9 different essential oils, plus the CBD oil. Now I am looking at how we can start reaching for the same effective impact in a oral product for systemic pain.
Toward that goal I thought I could discuss an excellent systemic anti-inflammatory agent – bromelain. Bromelain is commonly known as pineapple enzyme, and is frequently used in digestive aids to help you digest proteins. Bromelain is actually a combination of a number of different enzymes extracted from the core and stems of pineapples. There is not much of it in the fruit portion of the pineapple. The most natural way of getting this beneficial group of enzymes is simply by eating the fibrous core of the pineapple. Waiting until the pineapple is really ripe makes this easier. Throwing the core into the blender with the rest of your smoothie also makes this easier, as the fiber is pretty dense.
I already said bromelain was an anti-inflammatory, but it also reduces swelling and edema; thins the blood, thus decreasing clotting; breaks down mucus; and has been found to stop the metastasis of lung cancers. Here is a more specific list of conditions it has been found to help:
Arthritis – both Rheumatoid and osteoarthritis
Joint pain from tendon and ligament injuries
Digestive issues like heartburn and diarrhea
Sinus infections and bronchitis
Fights allergies and asthma
Possible multiple cancer benefits
Inflammatory bowel disease, Ulcerative colitis
Wound healing, especially burns
Bromelain seems to be pretty amazing. It has so many different ways that it affects the body. It seems to trigger the release of cytokines – the little chemical messengers in the body that tell lots of different cell in the body to behave differently. It tells blood cells not to stick together. It tells certain cancers cells to die. It tells certain immune cells to chill out and stop reacting to things, so it decreases allergic sensitivities. It tells the inflammatory immune cells around joints to stop inflaming the local tissues. And it breaks down certain proteins that are clogging up wound sites slowing down healing.
Another interesting benefit of bromelain is that it can be used to help get rid of H. pylori infections in the stomach. H. pylori is the gut spirochete bacteria that shuts down your stomach’s ability to form the hydrochloric acid needed to digest proteins and absorb minerals.
Special warning, since it does thin the blood, you don’t want to use bromelain if you are already on blood thinners or anti-clotting agents. The effect of both could make your blood too thin. Likewise, if you are allergic to pineapple, then you don’t want to use bromelain.
How much bromelain should you use? If you are using a bromelain powder like I have, you want to take ¼ teaspoon twice a day on an empty stomach. Bromelain comes in different strengths measured as GDU – gelatin dissolving units, and these units are not uniform across different countries. The dose generally varies between 400mg twice a day for arthritis and 1000mg twice a day for allergies and surgery recovery for capsule forms of bromelain.
The idea here for folks with chronic pain is to interrupt the pain causing mechanisms as much as possible. By stopping the inflammation at its source, instead of merely blocking the pain, you help prevent degenerative changes from decimating your life. Of course you still need to stop setting off the fires of inflammation in your body with bad food choices, too much stress, too many toxins in your personal environment, not enough good sleep, too little exercise, and so on. If you are in pain all these things need to be addressed.
People have been using powerful painkillers for too long to be able to ignore their real health with the lie that says – “If it doesn’t hurt, then it must be ok.” With the right pain killers you can cut your leg off and quickly bleed to death and not feel a thing. So this is another important perspective on pain relief. The goal is not to eliminate pain so you can go right on doing whatever you want. You need pain as feedback to let you know what works for your body and what does not work. Once you do what needs to be done for your health, then you try to reduce the pain. Treat the causes, not the symptoms – at least not the symptoms by themselves.
Bromelain is just one added support for you to help manage life in this complex toxic world. Personally I also use curcumin (turmeric extract), fish oil, CBD’s, glycine, and a bunch of other stuff daily to keep my body happy. My most powerful intervention is fasting – sometimes less is more.
To see if bromelain might be useful for you, I am making up a bunch of packets containing 18 doses of bromelain – 9 days worth. That should be long enough to tell if it is effective for you. Take ¼ teaspoon in water on an empty stomach twice daily for 9 days and see how you feel. The cost is only $2.79 + tax. That is only 33 cents a day. As with every natural supplement and even with hard core drugs, every individual will have a different
level of response. For some this will be amazing and for others the response will be minimal. So give it a try. It might be a great addition to your pain relieving arsenal.