environmental. And when you start to delve into problems where people
experience chronic pain—as is the case with ailments such as fibromyalgia and
arthritis—the treatments are varied, nuanced, and complex, involving
medications, exercise, and sometimes more advanced medical options.
Easing Aches with Food
No matter what hurts and why, you can complement your main treatment plan by
addressing pain with nutrition.
Before modern medical developments, ancient cultures often used food and
herbs as modes of pain relief. There are many examples that were chronicled in
writings and oral histories. Sage was used by Native Americans to relieve a
variety of ailments, and the ancient Greeks are believed to have used barley soup
with vinegar and honey to help with diseases of the chest. The Egyptians had
their labourers eat a diet featuring radishes, garlic, and onion, which they
believed would stave off diseases. (In fact, these foods do contain compounds
that have been shown to have a protective effect.) Nutrition wasn’t their only
method, but in the absence of pills and procedures, they chose food, spices, and
herbs to do their healing. The ancient Ayurvedic traditions of the East offer
numerous solutions that have passed scientific muster centuries later.
Our modern storehouse of knowledge about nutrition and the body lets us
target pain more accurately. Why do these foods help? I’ll back up to explain: If
you remember the tale of inflammation (described on Arteries Friends and
Enemies), it’s your body’s response to some kind of injury. This is a good thing,
because it’s an attempt to send helpers to your broken or damaged body part or
tissue.
You can see how that works for something like a twisted ankle: Trip on the
sidewalk and your ankle might swell up to the size of a cantaloupe.
Inflammation happens there, and you feel pain because your body sends signals
up to your brain that you shouldn’t go skipping through the park anytime soon.
The nerves play a major role, communicating what is hurt to your brain, which is
actually the place where we evaluate the damage.
Inflammation makes the danger detectors in your brain more sensitive, so
when you’re injured, your brain is very aware of it—and attempts to protect you
from further injuring yourself. Your swollen ankle is incredibly sensitive when
you walk, even though you may not actually hurt the tissues by walking. Those
“ouch!” messages are a protective mechanism—sort of like a biological harness
to keep you from making a bad thing worse.