Study Shows NSAIDS Associated With 35% Increased Risk of Heart Attacks

A new study published in the British Medical Journal associated arthritis medications also known as NSAIDs (e.g., ibuprofen, naproxen, and Celebrex), with a 35 percent increased risk of heart attacks. The effect begins within one week of starting the medication and persists for as long as it's taken.

BOTTOM LINE
Approximately 30,000 - 50,000 people die from NSAID usage in the U.S. each year. Although this has been hinted at in earlier studies, this confirmation in the largest meta-analysis of its type (including over 466,000 subjects) shows this "drug problem" to be one of the largest preventable public health disasters.

PAIN IN AMERICA
Pain affects one-third of American adults. Unfortunately, most physicians receive little training in pain management except for prescribing standard NSAID arthritis medications and narcotics. Meanwhile, our raging prescribed opioid epidemic is linked to 15,000 overdose deaths/year.

Pain in America is a health issue experienced at home and right next door. Today, everyone knows somebody suffering from serious pain. The dirty secret is that many of these people have had heart attacks caused by the very pain medications they thought were helping them. With heart attacks being the number one cause of death in the U.S., and arthritis meds being some of the most frequently prescribed, the new study is one of the most important health breakthroughs of the year.

SOLUTIONS
The problem is not a lack of effective treatments; rather, of education. In the case of one of the worst types of chronic pain, fibromyalgia, gold standard research published in the Journal of Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (8:2, 2001), showed that chronic pain can be effectively treated by addressing its root causes through the S.H.I.N.E.� protocol, which treats: Inadequate Sleep, Hormonal deficiencies, Infections/Inflammation, Nutritional deficiencies, and lack of Exercise. The study showed that S.H.I.N.E. produced an average 90 percent improvement in quality of life vs placebo in 91 percent of subjects.

"The paradigm shift is to understand that pain is not an outside invader," explains that study's lead researcher, board certified internist Jacob Teitelbaum, MD. "Pain is actually part of our body's monitoring system which warns us when something needs urgent attention." According to Dr. Teitelbaum, pain is like the oil light on our body's dashboard. The conventional medical approach has been to cover the oil light with a Band-Aid or smash it with a hammer. "A more effective approach is to put oil in the car, and then the oil light goes out. In the same way, our research has shown that if you give the body what it needs, the pain goes away."

Dr. Teitelbaum explains that many studies have shown natural alternatives to be as effective, or even more effective than NSAIDs. Instead of causing side effects, they create side benefits. For example, a special curcumin/Boswellia combination has been found to be more effective than Celebrex for arthritis in a head-on study; and curcumin has been shown to be more effective than Zoloft for treating depression.

"There are many resources for people to become pain-free, safely," says Dr. Teitelbaum. "The integrative toolbox is large and medicine today has focused on only a few tools."