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Cannabis for Chronic Pain: A Proven Prescription for Using Marijuana to Relieve Your Pain and Heal Your Life - Softcover

Ivker, Rav

 
9781501155901: Cannabis for Chronic Pain: A Proven Prescription for Using Marijuana to Relieve Your Pain and Heal Your Life
Softcover
ISBN 10: 1501155903 ISBN 13: 9781501155901
Verlag: Atria, 2018

Inhaltsangabe

The first authoritative and comprehensive guide for treating chronic pain with medical marijuana from a holistic family physician who has treated more than six thousand chronic pain patients with cannabis.

While the number of patients using medical marijuana increases every year, misconceptions about cannabis and whether it’s harmful or dangerous still exist. In Cannabis for Chronic Pain, Dr. Rav explains the potential of marijuana’s capacity for healing anyone afflicted with chronic pain. Medical marijuana is a safe, non-addictive alternative to dangerous opiate pain pills. “Without a doubt, there is a great need for a reliable source on information regarding the safe and effective use of cannabis. Well, here it is. I can think of no other person who embodies such authority than Dr. Ivker,” (Michael Finkelstein, MD, FACP, ABIHM, author of Slow Medicine).

Along with sharing his own story of using medical marijuana to heal from a severe case of shingles, Dr. Rav guides you through the cannabis and holistic treatment for your specific chronic pain condition. If you are suffering from arthritis, back pain, migraines, fibromyalgia, menstrual cramps, IBS, Crohn’s Disease, anxiety, depression, or pain from cancer or its treatment, this may be the book for you.

"An excellent source of objective information about medical marijuana,” (Library Journal), Cannabis for Chronic Pain is the new, definitive guide for anyone who suffers from chronic pain.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Dr. Rav Ivker is a holistic family doctor with nearly five decades of experience treating more than 70,000 patients. He’s written seven holistic healing books, most notably Sinus Survival: The Holistic Medical Treatment for Sinusitis, Allergies, and Colds (Tarcher/Penguin). He is a board-certified holistic physician (ABIHM) and a Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians and runs his own holistic medical practice in Boulder, Colorado.

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Cannabis for Chronic Pain Introduction Chronic Pain Is a Blessing Disguised as a Curse
Joy and Woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul Divine. ’Neath every grief and pine, runs a joy with silken twine. Human beings are made for joy and woe, and when this we rightly know, through the world we safely go.

—William Blake, an English poet, painter, and printmaker (1757–1827)

I awoke with the pain hitting me like a bolt of lightning, as if I were being electrocuted. I had never felt a pain like this.

The diagnosis was easy. The grotesque blistering rash resembling chicken pox protruding from purplish skin along the left side of my abdomen and around my left flank to my back was unmistakable.

During my forty-four years as a family doctor I’d seen many patients suffering with shingles and this was a classic textbook case. The pain I experienced on that early-spring morning in March 2015, which I rated a 7 on a scale of 1 to 10, would soon progress to an 8 or 9 as my baseline pain level—i.e., it never went below an 8. This baseline persisted for another two months.

By the end of that first week and lasting for another four weeks, I had 10s and even 10+s (off-the-chart pain)! I referred to the latter as zingers. Fortunately when they hit me they didn’t last long. But my memory of them will remain vivid for the rest of my life. The zingers were flashes of excruciating pain, far beyond the baseline of an 8 and greater than a 10. I couldn’t imagine a pain worse than this. They came out of nowhere, with absolutely no warning, and literally took my breath away, and I yelled as if I’d just been shot or stabbed in my belly. (I’m assuming the pain was similar since I’ve fortunately never had either experience. I’ve since been told by a patient who’s endured both that the pain from shingles is actually worse than a gunshot.)

The zingers were totally incapacitating, and caused me to spontaneously curl up in a fetal position. This reflexive movement was my body’s response—to try and protect itself, to stop the pain, and to prevent it from recurring, all at the same time.

In the flick of a switch that traumatized me, along with my T-10 spinal nerve, my former life disappeared. I had been transformed from a vibrantly healthy sixty-eight-year-old guy to a survivor cowering in fear of the jolts of pain. My mind’s sole focus was riveted on relieving the agony. It was all-consuming.

To describe this as a humbling experience would be a gross understatement. For someone who had enjoyed a high degree of control through most of my adult life and had treated more than seventy thousand patients, I was now rendered completely powerless to affect what was happening to my body.

I found myself in a desperate situation, at the mercy of a vicious and relentless microscopic organism. I had absolutely no control of how my body reacted to the zingers. I was unable to stifle the screams and remain a silent sufferer. It felt like I was wearing an electrocuting belt strapped around my waist that was always turned on. And manning the control switch was a deranged, sadistic individual who took great pleasure in turning up the current to the max and zapping me whenever he chose.

My initial reaction to this horrific situation was to feel anger with myself. I was highly self-critical for having allowed myself to become so stressed that my immunity broke down to a point where I contracted the virus. “I know lots of stress management techniques. Why didn’t I do them? And why didn’t I get the shingles vaccine?” Such a simple preventive measure that I had failed to do. I also felt anger with God for allowing this to happen to me. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Shame was also included as part of my emotional pain; shame for being so physically weak that I had become vulnerable to the virus, when the primary focus of my personal and professional practice for the past thirty years had been optimal health—this was a long way from that state of well-being. I grieved and cried over the loss of my physical strength and vitality and a relatively happy life. They were gone, and I had no idea if I’d ever regain them. I had great empathy for the vast majority of my patients who were also suffering with chronic pain. But perhaps the emotion that I was least able to express was fear. I was afraid of the pain itself, and of the unknown. How long would it last? Would I be able to relieve the pain enough to work, to play with my grandkids, and to enjoy my life again?

Enduring chronic pain is like being tortured without any letup. Chronic means that to some extent it’s always there, like a jammed switch that won’t turn off. (Medically, it’s defined as pain that persists beyond three months.) And if the pain level remains at a level 5 or higher, then you’re presented with a formidable challenge in shifting your focus to anything else for more than a few minutes. The degree of difficulty in diverting attention away from the pain increases exponentially with each higher numeric rating. For me, pain beyond a 6 made it nearly impossible to function well. Other than the zingers that occurred throughout the first month, the pain persisted at a baseline level between 8 and 9 for more than two months and was never lower than a 5 baseline for the first six months. This was the case only when not using medical marijuana.

Never in my life had I experienced chronic pain or any pain even close to this intensity. As an athlete, I’ve certainly had my share of physical pain from broken bones, bruises, sprains, and strains, but nothing lasting longer than two or three weeks. Whatever the injury was, I usually noticed a slight pain reduction almost daily. The shingles pain, however, was constant and the improvement measured in weeks and months. During the first nine months, it would typically take from seven to nine weeks to reduce the baseline pain level by one degree. I learned during medical school that nerves can take an exceptionally long time to heal, but now I had been given an opportunity to personally experience just how slow that process can be.

The pharmaceutical options (primarily opioids) offered by my physician colleagues were not helpful. They were minimally effective at reducing the pain, but their side effects (drowsiness, nausea, constipation) only added to my misery and I was unable to function the way I needed to. I started to feel as if I’d been cursed as a result of having done something really awful and been given this virus as the worst possible punishment.

I cringe at the thought of what my life might have been like had I not decided to self-medicate with medical marijuana. Up to that point I’d seen more than six thousand patients suffering with chronic pain who were using medical marijuana as their primary analgesic. These patients were either seeking a state license to use it for the first time or, the majority of cases, renewing their license, which in Colorado is required annually. I heard repeatedly from my patients how much more effective (with no adverse side effects) cannabis was in relieving their pain than the narcotics they’d been prescribed. In some cases, they’d been taking a variety of opioids for many years and had developed dependence or, even worse, an addiction.

After first trying the conventional route during the first week, with disappointing results, I began using medical marijuana. It was miraculous! It consistently reduced the pain to tolerable levels of 3 to 4, allowing me to continue functioning at a reasonably high level. Although I always had pain, and zingers too during the first couple of months (they only occurred when I had not taken marijuana), I was...

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Verlag
Atria
Erscheinungsdatum
2018
Sprache
Englisch
ISBN 10 
1501155903
ISBN 13 
9781501155901
Einband
Taschenbuch
Anzahl der Seiten
368
Kontakt zum Hersteller
Nicht verfügbar
Verantwortliche Person
Simon and Schuster Netherlands BV
info@simonandschuster.nl

Herculesplein 96
Utrecht
3584 AA
Niederlande