PATIENT STORY OF THE MONTH! Eric’s Escape From Pain Medication We want to dedicate this portion of our newsletter to our amazing patients. Our wish is to encourage our patients to share their stories and reach out to people living with similar struggles. No one has to endure life with chronic pain, as demonstrated through our patients’ achievements. Eric C. suffered from severe chronic pain in both knees before coming to our office to receive injections. His pain had reached such a point that every step was excruciating. “Even when I wasn’t walking, they would hurt,” Eric shares. “I was limping all the time.”To fight the pain, he relied on medication. “I used to take pain pills —Tylenol, oh man, you can name it — every day like candy and food,” he says. But he had little results. The biggest frustration was how the pain impacted his life. “Not working and doing the things that I used to do was the biggest problem.You get older and start to lose cartilage in your knees, but I had to continue to work and survive,” he says.The pain Eric was experiencing prevented him from doing that and tied him to the medication he was taking That changed once he received a letter addressed to his father. “I saw some mail come in for him,” he explains. “It was something about arthritis pain, and I opened it up and called the number inside. I asked if I could take advantage of this, and Superior Health Centers said,‘Yeah, come on down.’And that’s when I found out about these kinds of treatments.” Within six weeks after his injections, Eric was back on his feet with absolutely no pain. “The treatment has helped me dramatically. I can walk normally, bend down, play with my grandkids, play with my dogs, and run with no pain. I can work again. I don’t have to fight to get back up when I drop something. I can bend down and pick it up quickly without any pain. I’m glad I opened that letter and found Superior Health Centers.” Stories such as Eric’s are what we aim for at Superior Health Centers. There are better treatments that people can receive without having to rely on drugs.We want everyone who experiences chronic pain to return to their daily lives completely pain-free.
CHRONIC ANGER, YOUR HEART, AND YOUR HEALTH How This Emotion Is Doing You Harm Anger is a common emotion. It’s natural, and it’s a part of how you respond to certain circumstances in your environment. It’s how you express extreme displeasure. However, new research suggests chronic anger can be detrimental to your health. Essentially, it comes down to this: If you are stressed, tense, easily irritable, angry, and “snippy” all the time, you may be doing serious harm to your well-being. Studies have already shown a link between anger and the heart. People who showed signs of feeling anger on a regular basis experienced higher rates of heart disease.The first studies on the impact of anger came out in the 1950s and have since been confirmed: Chronic anger physically harms the heart. Why?When you get angry or upset, your brain triggers the release of specific hormones, including cortisol and norepinephrine.These hormones are responsible for triggering the “fight or flight” response. When these hormones enter the bloodstream, your heart rate increases and arteries constrict.This helps to more effectively pump blood to the arms and legs for a fight or a flight. The problem is that when a person is constantly angry or upset, these hormones course through the body more frequently, stressing the arteries and internal organs. As a person ages, this stress can become more damaging. One study that appeared in the Psychology and Aging Journal looked into this phenomenon. Researchers found that there is a link between frequently experiencing anger and increased inflammation and chronic illness for people ages 80 and older.This equated to more instances of heart disease and dementia. The study also looked at other emotions, including sadness, which has also been linked to heart disease and other inflammatory diseases.Through a number of tests involving 200 participants ages 59–93, the researchers concluded anger was far more detrimental to a person’s health than sadness. Ultimately, if you regularly experience rage and frustration, properly dealing with your anger is one of the best things you can do for your health. Every person’s situation is different, and it comes down to getting to the bottom of what makes you angry so you can work through it, whether you work through it alone or with a mental health professional. Take the steps to prioritize your mental and physical health, and your efforts will pay off tenfold in the long run.
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