Tylenol is one of the most common pain-relievers on the market today. It is a well-trusted brand name, not only for pain relief, but fever reduction as well. The key ingredient in Tylenol, acetaminophen, is found in many other drugs on the market as well, but Tylenol is the most well known. Many people who are afflicted with chronic pain, turn to Tylenol or other acetaminophen based pain killers to help them deal with their pain and be able to function every day.

People who are in considerable pain, will often do anything they can to make the pain go away. Some make the mistake of thinking that taking more acetaminophen will reduce their pain faster and make it stay away longer than the recommended dosage does. Little do these people know, however, having too much acetaminophen in your system can lead to other serious health problems. Just by taking a double dose of acetaminophen, you are subjecting your liver to a possibly lethal dose, which could lead to liver failure. People who are in pain dont realize the consequences of taking too much medicine, they just want something to help them now. Thousands of people each year are being hospitalized for acetaminophen overdose, and hundreds die each year, not from intentionally overdosing, but misuse.

A common cause for this problem is that acetaminophen is found in most pain relievers on the market today. Many people will take Tylenol, then an hour or so later, turn around and take a different brand name pain killer, not realizing they are taking a double dose of basically the same ingredients. Many diseases and conditions cause chronic pain, such as arthritis, migraines, lupus, even down to the simple cold and flu that we all fall victim to at one time or another. In the search for something to lessen the pain and make day to day living more bearable, many people will inadvertently feed too much acetaminophen into their systems. It is important to understand that just because you may take a different type of pain killer, it is still likely to have the same active ingredients as the one you took before that didnt work. Taking larger doses will not lessen the pain any faster than a normal dose, however it will put you at a substantially increased health risk.

Some people are more susceptible to the side effects caused by many medicines than others. Even a normal dosage of acetaminophen can sometimes lead these people straight to the emergency room. It is important to keep in mind the effects that medicine have on you individually, before you start popping pills.

It is a good idea to start reading the labels of any medicine you are considering taking, especially to find out what the active ingredients are. You are probably better off not mixing over the counter pain relievers, just pick one that works for you and follow the recommended dosage. Avoid the temptation to take more thinking it will work better, as odds are high that it will do more harm to your system than good. If you are a person who suffers from chronic daily pain, you should see your doctor for recommendations on what to do to help alleviate it, rather than taking treatment into your own hands with over the counter products.

When a young athlete has the condition, he or she usually has a throbbing pain that occurs just below the knee joint. You may have pain in the joint at the base of your big toe, or in your foot, ankle, knee, elbow or hand.

Muscle force and body weight determine the degree of patello-femoral joint reaction force, which frequently contributes to anterior knee pain following TKA. This in-turn places stress on the knee joint, which results in pain and damage to the structures that make up the knee joint. Other conditions that can lead to knee pain include arthritis, infections, hemarthrosis blood in the knee joint, cysts and bone tumors. One could also experience a knee pain if there is an infection in the joint.

Nonspecific complaints may include global or generalized knee pain, joint line pain, or posterior knee pain. But some knee injuries and medical conditions, such as osteoarthritis, can lead to increasing pain, joint damage and even disability if left untreated.

Knee arthritis typically affects patients over 50 years of age. It is more common in patients who are overweight, and weight loss tends to reduce the symptoms associated with knee arthritis. There is also a genetic predisposition of this condition, meaning knee arthritis tends to run in families. Other factors that can contribute to developing knee arthritis include trauma to the knee, meniscus tears or ligament damage, and fractures to the bone around the joint.

Although it’s not always possible to prevent knee pain, the following suggestions may help forestall injuries and joint deterioration Keep extra pounds off!

Surgery is always the last option to any illness. However, if your knee pain is diagnosed by a medical doctor and if he recommends surgery, it is always safer to follow the professional advice. More than 90 of knee replacements result in dramatically reduced knee pain and increased mobility of the knee joint. Studies have shown acupuncture to be effective in relieving certain types of knee pain, especially arthritic conditions of the knee and knee joint.

If you have hurt your neck in any way, the best thing to do is rest. Lie back with an ice pack wrapped around the painful area for 30 minutes. Take an anti-inflammatory medicine such as ibuprofen 600 mg four times a day. Repeat cold packs 30 minutes, four times a day for two days. After a few days, gentle heat may be used intermittently to relax the area. Don’t overdo the heat, it can make you more sore. Limit it to about 20 minutes four times a day. Get back to your activities as quickly as you can. After a day of activity, an ice pack in the evening can reduce the next day stiffness.

Once you feel well enough, you will want to move onto the Rehab stage. Begin to restore your neck’s mobility. Begin by warming the neck for 10 minutes. Some light aerobic activity may help loosen the muscles. While sitting, tilt your neck forward until you begin to feel the stretch. Hold there for 30 seconds, relax a minute, then repeat 5 times. Do the stretch in the backwards direction, then tilting to each side ear towards shoulder, then rotating chin towards shoulder. Hold each stretch for 30 seconds, repeating 5 times. If the discomfort has increased after the stretches, cold-pack the neck for 30 minutes. Repeat the exercises twice a day.

For more active exercise, use the palm of your hand as a graded resistance machine. Put your palm against your forehead, and push your neck against it. Slowly push the hand forward with your head until the neck is fully bent, then let the head return to the neutral position while continuing resistance.

Repeat 10 times. Do the exercise for backward motion with both hands behind your head, then with side-tilt with a palm against your scalp just above the ear. Do the exercises twice a day.

As with all exercise, you need to listen to your body, keep the back of the neck and spine lengthened and the rib cage lifted. Remember to breathe as you work with the different exercises.
However, seeing a doctor is vital for all strains with a significant mechanism of injury or for severe, persistent, or unexplained symptoms or problems. As with other conditions, supportive self-care is often enough for you to have a complete recovery.

What should you do when you have a tension or a migraine headache? What should you do when you are experiencing chronic pain? Take a pain pill, right? WRONG! Most people don’t have a second thought when it comes to taking analgesics for their chronic headaches or other assorted aches and pains, but research from the St. Louis University School of Medicine demonstrates that “analgesic use seems to be the primary factor in promoting the development of chronic pain.” It was found that painkillers, instead of helping relieve the chronic pain, can actually be the cause of it.

“The best thing a person with chronic headaches can do is get off the painkillers,” says Paul Duckro, associate professor of psychiatry at St. Louis University. “In our studies, two-thirds of the chronic headache sufferers benefited from the withdrawal of medication.” Two-thirds of the chronic headache sufferers not only did not get rid of their headaches with the medications they were taking, but increased their severity through the use of analgesics.

“Evidently, at a certain point in a chronic sufferer’s intake of analgesics including aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen and the stronger narcotic painkillers, the headache becomes drug-induced. In an irony of biology, a substance intended to reduce pain becomes a factor in producing it.” Ibuprofen is the “pain-relieving” ingredient in Advil, Motrin IB, Nuprin and many other headache medications. Acetaminophen is the active “painkilling” ingredient in Tylenol. You should be aware that these popular medications may be hindering your recovery from your chronic headaches. And even worse, the medications that are supposed to be relieving your pain may actually be the cause of it.

According to Duckro “The person takes some aspirin, but the pain increases. So the person takes some more aspirin. Then the person begins to take aspirin in anticipation of the pain, thinking, ‘If it’s this bad when I’m taking medicine, it’s going to be unbearable without.’ Gradually, the person – and it’s more often a woman – gets a headache whenever the medicine is not being taken.” Duckro is director of St. Louis University’s Biobehavioral Treatment Center, which has its own headache management program.

Dr. William Bennett, head of nephrology at Oregon Health Sciences University, estimates that over-the-counter painkillers are responsible for as many as 20 of the 125,000 cases of end-stage kidney disease in the United States. All drugs have side effects. These can include dizziness, lightheadedness, nausea, vomiting, stomach pain, liver damage, kidney damage, internal bleeding and many other symptoms including death. We have always known and recognized these possible negative consequences from ingesting drugs unless we don’t read the labels, but we continue to take these analgesics by the mega millions with the hope of relieving our pain and discomfort.

There is no guarantee that if we take a pain pill for our chronic migraine headaches, stomach aches or other types of pain it will actually eliminate the pain. There is also no guarantee that we won’t experience unwanted reactions to the drug itself. But when the pain gets so bad we often decide that the possible relief outweighs the risk associated with the analgesic.

But what most of us do not realize is that there may be one more consequence from taking medication for chronic headaches. We may find that the analgesics are actually the cause of the symptoms, that without them we wouldn’t be having so many headaches. If you suffer with chronic headaches you may find that the pills you are taking are actually inducing your discomfort. And you may also discover that when you stop taking the medication you begin to experience fewer chronic migraines. After all, according to the director of St. Louis University’s Biobehavioral Treatment Center two-thirds of the chronic headache sufferers benefited from the withdrawal of medication.

All drugs are dangerous. Before a person suffering with a migraine headache takes an over-the-counter medication they should be asking the question “Is the possible benefit worth the risk of taking that drug?” William Osler, M.D. once said “The person who takes medicine must recover twice; once from the disease and once from the medicine.” Sadly, this can be all too true.

Dr. William Bennett, head of nephrology at Oregon Health Sciences University, estimates that over-the-counter painkillers are responsible for as many as 20 of the 125,000 cases of end-stage kidney disease in the United States.

Some medications have side effects that can be more serious than the painful migraine headaches themselves. Aspirin can cause internal hemorrhaging, or bleeding in the stomach. According to the Dec. 1996 issue of Health News and Views taking Tylenol once every 4 days increases the chance of liver damage by more than 400.

The main pain-relief ingredient in Tylenol is acetaminophen which has been shown to cause liver disease. “Tylenol,” as reported in the January 1998 issue of Forbes magazine, “can be very dangerous in doses not much greater” than the recommended dose. In 1989, Lacy Keele, a 5-year-old, took four extra strength tablets in one day, or twice what a child should receive. The overdose destroyed Lacy’s liver. Within a week she was dead. A jury found Tylenol to be a cause in her death.

There have been hundreds of fatalities and serious liver injuries attributed to acetaminophen, Tylenol’s active ingredient, since Lacy’s death. The biggest reason for these deaths is because people “tend to use Tylenol in a casual fashion.” Think about it You have a migraine headache so you take a few pills. The migraine doesn’t go away so you take a few more. The difference between a proper dose and an overdose is so small that dangerous amounts can easily be ingested accidentally. “No other over-the-counter drug has a more narrow range between therapy and toxicity than acetaminophen,” says Dr. William Lee, a professor of internal medicine at the University of Texas’ Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

L.F. Kebler, M.D. once said “Why should a patient swallow a poison because he is ill, or take that which would make a well man sick?” And O.W. Holmes, M.D., Professor of Medicine at Harvard University said “If all the medicine in the world were thrown into the sea, it would be bad for the fish and good for humanity.”

In the September 29, 1996 issue of the Los Angeles Times Magazine it makes it known that Ibuprofen kills thousands every year. Ibuprofen, the active ingredient in many pain relievers, including Advil, Motrin IB, and Nuprin, is known as a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug NSAID. People that take NSAIDs like ibuprofen regularly to ease their chronic migraine headaches are prone to gastric stomach disorders. Dr. James F. Fries, a leading arthritis expert and professor of medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, says “there’s an epidemic of adverse drug reactions to NSAIDs. The FDA believes anywhere from 10,000 to 20,000 deaths each year are the result of severe bleeding caused by NSAIDs. It’s a big problem.”

When taking medication to relieve migraine headaches it’s always a good idea to read the label carefully. If you decide to take pain-killing medications for your migraine headaches be sure to follow the directions. Using common sense can reduce your chances of experiencing adverse reactions.

Cancer Courage and Love By Lorraine Kember

Everyday we hear of people dealing with incredible sadness and loss and we wonder; how do they do it? Where do they find the courage the strength? We may even ask ourselves how we would cope under the circumstances. Sadly, we only become aware of the answer, when tragedy visits us and our own lives are thrown into turmoil.

When some one we love is diagnosed with a terminal cancer, life as we knew it changes forever. Suddenly we enter a new world, a world filled with helplessness, despair and fear of the unknown. We no longer walk aimlessly around shopping Malls; we walk the Hospital corridors and sit in chemotherapy waiting rooms and are shocked by the number of people afflicted by cancer. We can not help but wonder if one day we too may be a patient and we fear for our own mortality.

Sitting in a Chemotherapy ward is an experience not to be forgotten. Cancer has no respect for gender, age or wealth. There are people from every race, color and creed; rich, middle class and poor; and none of this makes the slightest difference. They are all untited in their suffering, fellow human beings on the same sad journey.

One can not bear witness to the incredible courage of those who have cancer, without being deeply affected. My husbands courage in the face of his terminal mesothelioma cancer held me in awe and I decided to do everything within my power to help him.

I learned about the stages and symptoms of his disease; the pain he would experience and ways to bring it under control, so that I could work with his doctors, to achieve for him, the best possible quality of life for what ever time he was granted. It was incredibly hard to wake each day with the knowledge that my husband was dying; my anticipatory grief often overwhelmed me but somehow I managed to carry on. One day a lady said to me, You are such a strong woman. and I wondered what had made her say that. I didnt feel strong, I felt like I was breaking.

Despite a prognosis of three to nine months, my husband survived for two years and was not bed bound until three short days prior to his death. My journey beside him as he traveled to the end of his life, has taught me many things, above all the true meaning of love and the strength of the human spirit.

Deep within ourselves there is strength and courage to sustain us in times of personal tragedy. I have come to realize that during my husbands illness, I was indeed strong. I may have staggered with the burden of my grief but I did manage to help my husband achieve a quality of life few thought possible considering the nature of his disease. And, thanks to the expertise and dedication of the Palliative Care Team, I was able to fulfill my promise to him that he would not die in hospital. His death at home was as loving, sharing and peaceful as anyone could wish for.

I have witnessed courage; that of my husband as he battled his disease and of my own as I stood beside him, determined to improve the quality of his life. The knowledge that I was successful in this has brought me much peace. My husbands illness and death have wounded me deeply yet I have emerged far stronger than ever before and gone on to achieve things I never thought possible.

My experience has taught me not to take life for granted and to live each day with thanks for the wonderful gift that it is. I have witnessed death; my awareness of the fragility of life, despite the strongest of wills strengthens my determination to grasp everything life offers me, with both hands.