The thing with the DMSO that bothers me is that it treats the pain but doesn't treat the underlying cause.. like throwing water on the fire...
Pain is the body's way of telling you something is wrong. If you are treating the pain without addressing the root cause of the pain, all you are doing is allowing whatever the problem is to get worse and worse even tho you may be pain free ..
The big question I think is What is causing MY joint pain? the source of mine could be different from someone else's ...
What works for one person may not always work for another so where it comes to drug interactions, do not rely on verbal advice however well meaning it may be unless it is from a pharmacist, or a liscensed health care practitioner..
This post is a bit long because I have a theory on joint pain.. in order to treat it we need to identify the source.
I think the one thing we can agree on is that it is a muscular skeletal pain..
Usually for me, when my right knee starts aching I know that means my Crohn's is flareing and time to call my GI.. Usually he would put me on Prednisone because we pretty much know that there is inflamation somewhere. He would schedule a Colonoscopy to find out what is going on.
That was how it was back in the early 90's when I was first diagnosed with Crohn's.
with this latest eppisode, I was started with 60 mg of prednizone right in the er based on my history, and the fact that it had been nearly 15 years since my last colonoscopy.
So from this, we can speculate that the root cause of my joint pain would be the lack of nutrients neccecary for strong bones due to malabsorption caused by inflamation ...
Between the pain meds, the Prednizone, the Cypro/Flagyl combo etc... I was in no pain. The prednizone was preventing inflamation and the cypro and flagyl were attacking the bacteria... then the zofran was preventing Nausea.
the pain meds are great, but they are meant to provide relief from pain.. the pain meds do not treat the underlying cause... Dont get me wrong, when it was time, the nurse brought my meds in and I took em... I was not about to lay there and suffer needlessly..
Now that I am down to 50 mg of prednizone, My legs get stiff if I am on my feet too long and my knees ache. My Colon is disconected from my intestines to give them a chance to heal with the prednizone...
for my joints to be hurting at 50 mg of prednizone that would tell me that my inflamation was really bad...
In addition to watching to make sure I am getting the right nutrients and taking my prednizone, I take my pain meds for relief of the pain..
As far as my colon goes, the surgeon thinks it may need to come out but we won't know untill they are able to do the colonoscopy. The hope is that between now and Aug/Sept, the prednizone will have cleared the inflamation in my intestines and by some miracle if the colon is ok then I wont need to have it taken out... I am keeping the bag tho, simply because I feel that a reconnection would only put me back to where I was before my flare up... and i will need to have a colonoscopy every year or so..
Prednizone is one of those medications that while they do what they are supposed to do, you don't want to be on it for too long because it can cause problems.
The pain meds are great, but prolonged use of them is not safe for me because of the Psych meds I take,
my own experience would lead me to speculate that joint pain occurs when there is a deficency of the vitamins and minerals needed for strong healthy joints.. in other words, something is preventing proper absorption of those nutrients... Inflamation is one of many causes possible, sometimes medications will react with each other and cause problems... also, even taking vitamins together that should not be taken together can cause a reaction..
It is important that you use only one pharmacy if possible and in addition to your prescriptions, let the pharmacist know about any over the counter products you take.
most pharmacies now have a system where when you turn in your perscriptions, if there is a danger of an interaction an alert will come up.
Prescription for nutritional healing by Phyllys A, Balch, CNC
the link provided in the book did not work but if you type Drug interactions database you will get many sites,
this one works
http://www.drugs.com/drug_interactions.html
no need to register, just click the I agree button on the page to test it out.
just to test it out, I just checked remicade and 286 possible interactions popped up!
the classifications of interactions are either Major,Moderate or minor
right away two major interactions pop up even before you click the show all medications link..
Prednisone is one of them, and Methotrexate...
Flagyl came up under Moderate,
if you scroll down the list of major interactions, some of the common over teh counter meds show up too,