Where do headaches come from?
So many people reach for painkillers to help their headaches, some even put it down to dehydration – yes this is a cause, but it’s not just lack of drinking water that’s dehydrated you, it’s the carbohydrates that break down into sugar.
Let me explain –
Sugar causes inflammation in and around your nerves, it’s like a sparkler going off inside you when you have sugar and your know when the sparks fly they singe your carpet or floor, the same applies to the sugar sparkler inside you – it singes your nerves and myelin sheath arounds your nerves, it causes blood vessels to constrict, which reduces blood flow to the nerve – and reduced blood flow means that the tiny blood vessels bringing nutrients and oxygen to your nerves constrict and then clog up.
So the more sugar you have, the more it singes, and the more it clogs and less and less blood flow.
When damage is done close to the nerve itself of course it’s going to give you a pain sensation, a prickly feeling and lead into an ache.
This ache could be in the neck, knees, toes or fingers – it usually is in a joint that moves a lot as you cause friction, the area is very restricted at the joints so this inflames that area with nerve damage.
This is where your headaches come into play.
When we eat highly refined carbohydrate products such as pasta, flour, prepackaged foods, breads etc that have not only added sugar, but the carbohydrate factor breaks down as sugar and therefore you have a double whammy of sugar, (think of all those sparklers going off now), and think of all that restriction and clogging up inside.
Carbo-hydrate says it all for you – it dehydrates you, so eating all these foods, and not having enough water certainly results in dehydration everyday, plus your nerves are still smoldering with the sugar sparklers, blood is thick and not flowing freely with assisted water.
When this happens this could be a sign of peripheral neuropathy which leads into expanding waistlines, early symptoms, such as high blood pressure or high cholesterol, are painless and invisible.
You may start with tired, achy feet, to say nothing of painful pricks and periodic numbness, are the first wisps of smoke as the fire of neuropathy smolders. When you are at this point, you have a clear choice; put out the fire now by changing your diet, or face the later phases of neuropathy, nerve damage to your feet cannot be fully reversed.
Beginning nerve damage is painful. The term for the sharp, prickling sensation first felt is called formication, the the Latin – to crawl like an ant – because people describe it as having ‘biting insects crawling on the skin’. This is usually followed with burning sensations, restless legs, and sensitivity to cold, heat, and touch. Most pain is at night, keeping them from sleeping and sometimes the pain during the day can keep you housebound with little movement. – Depression sets in and painkillers are all that people want to have to rid the pain.
However painkillers are not fixing the root cause, they may put a buffer over that feeling for a little while, but if you do not change your diet you are still setting off sparklers inside your body, and creating another area of damage around your nerves and next you know it you have sore knees or hips. This doesn’t control your blood sugar level one bit.
Reducing sugar in your diet sharply reduces your development of diabetes with its myriad of severe health issues. You don’t get diabetes over a year, you have this brewing inside you years prior to it rearing its ugly head.
So Big Pharma!!! (in the words of Dr Richard Jacoby – Sugar Crush)
Painkilling drugs usually prescribed for neuropathy can cause more problems than they help.
Two commonly prescribed medications:
Lyrica/pregabalin (for fibromyalgia or diabetes)
Neurontin/ gabapentin
Both these were developed as treatments for individuals with epilepsy, that wasn’t well controlled with other drugs.
They’re not opiates such as Vicodin or OxyContin, so they’re less likely to cause dependence or be abused.
Patients that start taking these drugs become so dependant on them and are a life customer to Big Pharma, you’re hooked on them and at least one other drug.
If you have diabetes, for example, you might be taking one of many different drugs – drugs that work by you making your cells a little less resistant to insulin, or by forcing your overworked pancreas to squeeze out a bit more insulin. Do they do anything to deal with what actually causes diabetes? No not at all. In fact, because they make your diabetes seem a bit better, at least as measured by your blood sugar numbers, the people who take them figure that they don’t have to do anything else, such as avoiding sugar and becoming more active.
Here’s the thing – most of these drugs make it harder to lose weight, which is step one on the diabetes self-help list.
My brother started following a paleo diet once he was told by mainstream medical doctors they could no longer help him with chemo in his final battle with cancer. Wayne was also diabetic due to his operation (whipple’s) prior removing most of his pancreas due to pancreatic cancer.
Once Wayne went off grains, fruit, dairy and refined carbohydrates, eliminating any form of sugar he can – his diabetic medications dropped!!
This decision unfortunately was too late in his fight, as the cancer was spreading like wildfire!!! – But however – IF he had made this decision even 3 months earlier I bet his life on Earth would have been different.
Please make good choices, please don’t abandon your children at an early age due to chronic illnesses that can be prevented from understanding what’s in your current diet and how it affects you – your body is always telling you when something is wrong, please don’t cloud that judgement with painkillers.
To your health
Kerrie
Professional Health and Fitness Coach
