Very interesting Robyn and have seen this before about the wisdom of letting the inflammation response do its thing instead of suppressing with drugs. Now, does that also mean we should not ice, apply elevation and compression to acute pain from injuries like say a sprained ankle?
Considering the widespread promotion of RICE as the standard of care for sprains and strains, there's a disturbing lack of evidence of its benefits (e.g. see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3396304/). The Rest part is probably the most straightforwardly sensible, while the Ice part is the most likely to be counterproductive (even the RACGP is catching onto this, e.g. see https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/is-it-time-to-rethink-rice-for-soft-tissue-injurie). I suspect the Compression and Elevation parts may be quite useful, but without a multiarm RCT testing out every permutation of RICE, it's impossible to say for sure.
Well, looks like it now all over between ibuprofen and me. I used to take them every time I stubbed a toe or strained a calf but it turns out that 'nature knows best'' and if you leave your body to do what it does best (i.e. heal itself starting with inflammation) then the prognosis is really good long term. Ibuprofen now joins my growing collection of 'exes', along with my old flames the flu vaxx and the pneumococcal vaxx.
My heuristic is always some version of 'how would humans have survived if this process was inimical to health?' It's not foolproof, but it generally works quite well!
It really is amazing. To me, it's a testament to the remarkable self-organising and self-healing power of the body. The degree of hubris required to assume that its workings would be improved by a pharmaceutical, is quite astonishing.
Well, FMS is characterized by a long term inflammatory response. I have always regarded inflammation as a sign that the body is working on the problem, but with issues like FMS, the inflammation never resolves. It is permanent. Common sense tells us that FMS causes inflammation but inflammation does not cause FMS. But if that is the case, what IS causing the FMS that the inflammation is trying to resolve. For most of my life I have thought that chemical and heavy metal toxins cause the problem that the inflammation is trying to resolve, and now I am thinking that stress hormones may be, at some level, at least part of the cause. However, all medical intervention is focused on removing the inflammatory response not on identifying and removing the cause.
Supervised water-only fasting acts like a 'reset' button for this aberrant inflammatory response. I've seen it work wonders for FMS. During fasting, there are dramatic changes in immune cell activity, hormone levels, the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity (which lowers stress hormone levels), along with intense detoxification and autophagy.
That is an excellent question, and I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer for you. Based on the research, it's highly likely that initial use of ibuprofen may have subverted the healing response to such a great degree, that you would need some kind of intervention to get it back on track. Supervised water-only fasting, and cold laser therapy, would be my go-tos in this case.
Very interesting Robyn and have seen this before about the wisdom of letting the inflammation response do its thing instead of suppressing with drugs. Now, does that also mean we should not ice, apply elevation and compression to acute pain from injuries like say a sprained ankle?
Considering the widespread promotion of RICE as the standard of care for sprains and strains, there's a disturbing lack of evidence of its benefits (e.g. see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3396304/). The Rest part is probably the most straightforwardly sensible, while the Ice part is the most likely to be counterproductive (even the RACGP is catching onto this, e.g. see https://www1.racgp.org.au/newsgp/clinical/is-it-time-to-rethink-rice-for-soft-tissue-injurie). I suspect the Compression and Elevation parts may be quite useful, but without a multiarm RCT testing out every permutation of RICE, it's impossible to say for sure.
Do nothing, intelligently! I love it.
Me too! I stole this from the late, great Alec Burton, who may well have borrowed it from someone else :).
Well, looks like it now all over between ibuprofen and me. I used to take them every time I stubbed a toe or strained a calf but it turns out that 'nature knows best'' and if you leave your body to do what it does best (i.e. heal itself starting with inflammation) then the prognosis is really good long term. Ibuprofen now joins my growing collection of 'exes', along with my old flames the flu vaxx and the pneumococcal vaxx.
My heuristic is always some version of 'how would humans have survived if this process was inimical to health?' It's not foolproof, but it generally works quite well!
Amazing research! Thank you.
It really is amazing. To me, it's a testament to the remarkable self-organising and self-healing power of the body. The degree of hubris required to assume that its workings would be improved by a pharmaceutical, is quite astonishing.
Well, FMS is characterized by a long term inflammatory response. I have always regarded inflammation as a sign that the body is working on the problem, but with issues like FMS, the inflammation never resolves. It is permanent. Common sense tells us that FMS causes inflammation but inflammation does not cause FMS. But if that is the case, what IS causing the FMS that the inflammation is trying to resolve. For most of my life I have thought that chemical and heavy metal toxins cause the problem that the inflammation is trying to resolve, and now I am thinking that stress hormones may be, at some level, at least part of the cause. However, all medical intervention is focused on removing the inflammatory response not on identifying and removing the cause.
Supervised water-only fasting acts like a 'reset' button for this aberrant inflammatory response. I've seen it work wonders for FMS. During fasting, there are dramatic changes in immune cell activity, hormone levels, the balance of sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system activity (which lowers stress hormone levels), along with intense detoxification and autophagy.
That is an excellent question, and I'm afraid I don't have a definitive answer for you. Based on the research, it's highly likely that initial use of ibuprofen may have subverted the healing response to such a great degree, that you would need some kind of intervention to get it back on track. Supervised water-only fasting, and cold laser therapy, would be my go-tos in this case.