Essential Fats Relieve Pain: Personal Story

Essential Fats help Reduce Pain from Inflammation

This story begins with unexplained pain on my chest. Not in my chest, but on my chest.

Have you ever experienced this kind of thing?
One day you wake up and something different hurts?

Anyway, one day I wake up, and my chest hurts. After a week or so, the pain was so bad that I was having trouble just brushing my teeth. So I went to see a doctor. This highly educated and kind doctor told me that there is cartilage that attaches my ribs to my breastplate. And this cartilage is inflamed. Who knew that could happen?!

Now here’s the really lousy part that you can probably see coming…

The doctor had no idea what was causing that inflammation, but he sure did have an anti-inflammatory drug for the pain! So in my uninformed state, I took this prescription drug, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID). People take these types of drugs all the time, (Tylenol/acetaminophen and Advil/ibuprofen are the most common) for all sorts of inflammatory conditions that give them pain. And these drugs really do work. My pain was gone, IF I took the drugs. When the drugs wore off, the pain came back.

After a few months of taking NSAIDs for my unexplained inflammation, I was still very uninformed. Until I came across an article about my particular NSAID. This article stated that my NSAID was causing heart attacks and strokes in many people! Of course, I quit taking the drug, but still needed to get rid of my pain.

At this point, I realized that it was not the pain that I needed to get rid of, it was the underlying inflammation that had to go!

So I had a conversation with my caring and very thorough chiropractor. He was not sure what was causing my pain either, but loaned me a book about healing with foods, and suggested that I might find a solution in there.

Lo and behold… there was my answer in black and white! A whole section was dedicated to foods that are high in essential fatty acids, and these foods are natural anti-inflammatories. They reduce inflammation, and pain.

I started taking Fish Oil Capsules.
After only about 2 months… My Pain Was Gone!

I know that 2 months might seem like a long time to get rid of pain, when you could just take a pill from the pharmacy. There is a critical difference between permanently removing the cause, and masking the symptom, which is only temporary. When you only mask the symptom, the problem will always come back to haunt you.

Why would you take drugs to mask the pain of inflammation, when natural EFAs work to remove the cause of your pain?