Hey everyone, it’s a Dr. Dave! What kind of experiences are you up to today? I hope you are having fun and enjoying life.

I also hope you’re having a good time making those memories and, having said that statement, it’s great when we can. There are, unfortunately, a lot of people who can’t. One of the biggest things that detracts from our ability to have these great experiences every day is pain. Pain affects everybody from moms and dads, to youths and seniors, and in all kinds of occupations. Sometimes, all of these people turn to opioids for relief.

People end up having pain problems because physically, chemically and emotionally, life throws us some challenges. Not just any one challenge but usually multiple challenges over time. Sometimes we end up with a macro problem, it happens in a big instant like an accident. Or it’s a micro problem that builds up over time repeatedly and we end up falling behind on our health.

Nobody likes to be in pain and I don’t blame them, I don’t like to be in pain myself. We quite often turn to solutions that help get us out of pain quickly. When we seek out that pain relief, we turn to medications. Whether over-the-counter or prescription, there’s a place and a need for these medications. Opioids are very powerful and useful at helping us work through some pain.

The challenge with opioids is that they quite often do not deal with the cause or source of our health problem. Our body is very good at eliminating a foreign substance like opioids from our body. It does it faster and faster with more exposure. Therefore, quite often a need for those medications increases to help deal with the same amount of pain. The challenge with that is sometimes there are some nasty side effects. In fact, every year in the United States alone, thirty thousand people die from side effects from opioids.

Opioids Used For Pain Problems Can Lead to Addiction

Three out of five people who end up illegally abusing opioids come from average people, day-to-day people, living their lives, who end up with a pain problem and who have used prescriptions to help. Unfortunately, many never resolve the problem and end up using them for the long term. Death is just one of the worst side effects. There are so many others that cause a downward spiral in a person’s health.

This is nothing new and this is something that’s very well documented. Opioids have been increasingly in the news and in the research. The tragedy really is that opioids use should be a last resort or a short-term strategy. There should be a focus on more conservative options to help that person with their health problem. Especially their pain problem so that it doesn’t become a chronic health problem with an increased risk to their health over the years.

( Transcript to video originally posted here. )

Chiropractic care, being the third largest healthcare profession in the world, the largest drug free, surgery free, healthcare profession in the world, not only focuses on helping people get relief. By improving and recovering function, people can maintain that relief. If they need any medications, they’re going to be a last resort or a short-term option. And chiropractic is not the only choice; massage therapy, naturopathy, traditional Chinese medicine… there are a lot of different approaches that can help people with their pain so that they don’t have to resort to these dangerous options like opioids.

Those medication options are very effective and sometimes quite necessary. We don’t want to become dependent on them. We don’t want to be fooled into thinking we are dealing with the cause or source of the problem. If you’re one of these people who are unfortunate enough to have had some buildup in your life or now you’re dealing with some pain state or if you know someone who’s dealing with pain, whether it’s new or long-term, you want to encourage them to seek out some of these conservative options – like chiropractic care – so that they don’t end up on a path that’s going to be detrimental to their health in the long term.

As I mention quite often in my videos and podcasts, about creating good experiences in life, even when someone takes that medication, their experience in life just isn’t the same. That’s because their body is not able to experience the world the same way when it’s altered through a drug. If we want to have great experiences, we want to seek out these conservative options. Go out there, help your friends, help your family, help yourself, and make sure they’re considering all their options. That way we can all have these great experiences together.