Kratom and painkillers: the natural medicine for aches and pains
All over our planet, millions of people suffer daily with the most varied types of pain. Many of them cannot stand even a minute without the discomfort caused by some illness or trauma converted into painful sensations that require some kind of medication to make it through their daily lives in a minimally bearable way.
There are two main classifications for pain: acute and chronic. Acute pain is usually related to more specific and immediate problems, such as being injured or something yet to be diagnosed. Chronic pain is different, usually lasting weeks, months or even years. Its original cause may have been an injury, an infection or more likely a reflection of an ongoing cause of pain, such as arthritis, fibromyalgia or cancer. Psychological and neurological conditions, such as depression, can worsen the state of chronic pain.
To cope with such pain situations, we often look for what we have been taught as a safe source of relief: medications prescribed by the doctor, or even easier: OTC drugs. Despite the effectiveness of many of them, industrialized drugs from Big Pharma often have harmful and/or addictive side effects on the body.
“We believe that common sense should prevail in recognizing that some industrialized medicines can be substituted or supplemented by natural medicines that do not harm other organs of our body.”
The simple and well-known paracetamol and ibuprofen, for example, can irreversibly damage the liver. We will not stop to detail all their adverse effects, but there are enough scientific studies showing that virtually all painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs have dangerous consequences, especially when used in high doses and/or over a longer period of time.
When it comes to chronic pain sufferers, it becomes more common to find people who depend on opioids, such as morphine, tramadol, methadone, oxycodone, etc.; all of them with devastating adverse effects on the human body. If we consider that a person suffering from chronic pain needs – and probably will need – these drugs for a long period of time or perhaps for their whole life, we can get a dimension of the danger of this dependency. The powerful pharmaceutical industry has no doubt that it is a very profitable business.
Let us be clear that we are not demonizing the pharmaceutical industry: it is truly amazing that science has been increasingly presenting us solutions to our health issues. However, we believe that common sense should prevail in recognizing that some industrialized medicines can be substituted or complemented by natural medicines that do not harm other organs of our body.
“The great increase in the popularity of kratom for almost 20 years in the United States, and recently in Europe, shows that its efficacy and effectiveness are real”.
Each case must be analyzed individually with great care, because there are industrialized medicines that, in fact, do not find a similar effect among those we have access to today in natural medicine. But in other cases they do, and this does not seem to please the pharmaceutical lobby very much.
Due to the desolate panorama of choosing between pain and adverse effects, natural medicine is gaining space as an alternative or complementary to industrialized drugs. In reality, natural medicine has been around for a couple of millennia: the first great civilizations of our planet already possessed quite advanced knowledge in many fields of medicine.
Undoubtedly, the technology and discoveries of the last centuries were very beneficial to better understand our physiology and to advance very quickly in the development of modern techniques to deal with our pains and diseases. This is so important that the pharmaceutical lobby is today one of the most powerful in the world and, unfortunately, the negative side of this is precisely the discrediting of natural medicine, even when it offers legitimate solutions.
The concept of natural medicine encompasses different fields and is very broad: herbal medicine, dietary supplements, acupuncture, neural therapy, biomagnetism, etc. As this article proposes the discussion of industrialized medications for pain that have a natural alternative, here we will stick to herbal medicine as the main object of our study. Realizing the harmful effects that certain medications cause to the body, many people often look towards nature for an alternative with similar pain-relieving effects for their pain, but without the side effects.
Kratom: natural painkiller for chronic and acute pain.
Kratom for pain?
The kratom plant has been used for millennia in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia and other Southeast Asian countries as a treatment to manage pain, improve mood and help with various other physical and mental conditions, such as fatigue, depression and anxiety. Only very recently has kratom begun its journey in the Western world, as more and more people have discovered and proven its effectiveness.
It has been shown through scientific studies that kratom has analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties (e.g., in the academic publication “Following ‘the roots’ of kratom…”). There is evidence to suggest that, at low doses, kratom can be used as an antidepressant, while at higher doses it may have an anxiolytic effect (scientific article “Kratom use and mental health: a systematic review”). Its side effects in regular doses usually do not go beyond mild dehydration, constipation and dry mouth, which can be easily controlled by hydrating more frequently.
Beyond the studies already conducted on the benefits of kratom, in practice, the great increase in the popularity of kratom for almost 20 years in the United States, and recently in Europe, shows that its efficacy and effectiveness are real. Kratom is not used as a recreational drug, as its effects are not like those of a high. The people who use it are usually precisely those who suffer from pain or mood alterations.
There are many real stories with different types of situation in which kratom provided a substantial improvement in the quality of life of people who have to manage their pain due to injuries, trauma, infections, fibromyalgia, endometriosis, arthritis, period pain, migraine, multiple sclerosis, etc., in addition to many who also consume it due to depression, anxiety, food compulsion, insomnia, etc. Check out lots of stories from people using kratom for pain here.
“The people who consume kratom are usually precisely those who suffer from pain or mood alterations”.
If you have an ongoing treatment with industrialized drugs, do discuss with your doctor how it is possible to alternate or substitute it with other substances. Our body adapts to medications, and their sudden withdrawal can be not only painful, but also dangerous. Unfortunately, kratom is little known by the medical community and, on top of that, there is a lot of prejudice and propaganda to discredit it.
What I can guarantee as the author of this text is that I know many people who benefited from kratom, which helped them to improve their quality of life by being able to manage their chronic or acute pain with a natural plant that usually has no adverse effects, and when there is, it is very mild and controllable. It is a matter of trying and checking it out.
There are academic studies that demonstrate the efficacy of kratom to fight various types of pain.
KRATOM NATURAL MEDICINE
KRATOM PAIN
KRATOM ACHE
KRATOM ENDOMETRIOSIS
KRATOM FIBROMYALGIA
KRATOM ANXIETY
KRATOM INSOMNIA
KRATOM DEPRESSION
KRATOM MIGRAINE
KRATOM MULTIPLE SCLEROSIS
