July 11, 2019
In this Q&A session, Dr. Michele Burklund, Puriya’s Chief Science Officer, talks about back pain.
The questions in this session include…
- What are some common symptoms I might experience if I have back pain?
- What are some causes of back pain?
- I’ve noticed that my back pain is worse after some activities, are there certain activities that I should avoid?
- What are some common therapies used to treat back pain and do they have any side effects?
- What are the ingredients in Puriya’s Ultra Relief Cream and what’s their mechanism?
- What are some other ways to reduce back pain?
If you want your questions to be included in our future FB live sessions write a comment below. We would love to hear from you!
Want even more great health tips + our FREE e-book!!! Sign up for our newsletter at https://www.puriya.com/pages/e-book
Right below, you will find the transcript of this video.
Transcript:
(00:00) – Hey, everyone, Dr. Michele Burklund here. I’m the Chief Science Officer here at Puriya, and I hope all of you had an amazing 4th yesterday and you’re going to have a nice relaxing weekend. If you are new, every week we have a Q&A session at Fridays, at 10:00 AM Pacific Standard Time, and we go over certain conditions. This week, we’re talking about back pain. If you are watching, let me know where in the world that you are watching from. Feel free to send any comments as well. And I want to remind all of you that you can always follow us here on Facebook Live, just in case you forget that we have Q&A every Friday, it’ll give you a nice little reminder, or you can sign up for our newsletter. And we have an amazing new eBook that I would love for all of you guys to check out. If you sign up for the newsletter, you will get it. And on top of the newsletter, you will be reminded every week of our topic we’re going to be talking about for our condition and who I’m going to be talking to on our interview series every week.
(01:11) – While I’m waiting for everyone, I’ll give you a little reminder. On Thursday, next week, we are going to be talking to Summer Kramer, who… She has a great story. She has her Doctor of Pharmacy, and years ago she was actually diagnosed with melanoma, skin cancer, and that kind of changed her whole vision and her whole idea of what she wanted to do. And she came up with a clothing line, a highly fashionable clothing line that also protects your skin. So, people who have sensitive skin, have had a history of skin cancer, or definitely wanna prevent it, her line covers all of that, and it’s amazing. We’re gonna talk to her next week about natural ways to protect your skin, and a little bit about her idea, and talking about the types of fabric and the weaves, and all these important things that we don’t really think about when we choose clothes that can have a big impact on our skin health. That’s going to be next week. Let’s see. So, we’ll wait just a little more.
(02:24) – Also, our website has been released and improved recently, so I highly recommend all of you check that out. We also have all of our ingredients through our ingredients directory there. If you have any questions about anything, you can click on that ingredient, it’ll give you more information and also the science behind it. So, lots of great things happening.
(02:46) – And we will start off now with back pain. First off, did you know that over 80% of Americans will experience back pain at some point in their lifetime? This is a huge topic and it affects a lot of people. In fact, it affects 31 million Americans, actually experience low back pain at any given time in America. This is huge. It’s actually one of the most common reasons people miss work. The first one is upper respiratory infections. The second one is back pain. So, huge topic. It’s the single leading cause of disability worldwide. And interestingly, back problems actually are more common in adult women than men. Lots to talk about, it affects most of us in some way or someone we know, and Americans spend at least $50 billion annually treating back pain. Back pain encompasses many different conditions and it can be a chronic condition or it can happen abruptly, and it can be acute. But in either case, we know it’s irritating. It can be severe, and it can even be debilitating.
(04:00) – With that, I am going to be starting off with the first question and it is, “What are some common symptoms I might experience if I have back pain?” Well, there can be many different symptoms, but some of the most common are pain when bending or lifting or standing or walking, so many different types of pain in many different motions. It can radiate down the leg. You can have back pain, and then it can… Then you can feel it go down your leg as well. And that can also be from a pinched nerve and other things, but we won’t go into all of that detail at this point. Pain when sitting or lying down, you can have severe discomfort, you can have back stiffness or back spasms or tenderness, too.
(04:48) – The next question I have, “What are some causes of back pain?” And we talked about pain that radiates down the leg, and that can be from a pinched nerve or sciatica. There is also herniated disks, spinal stenosis, muscle tendon strains or sprains. You can easily do that with your back muscles, you have quite a bit of them back there. There can be disk degeneration, which is actually quite common, too, in spondylolisthesis, too. Many different things, many different types of pain, but we know it’s huge in America and 31 million people are experiencing it at this moment, so it’s definitely something we need to talk about.
(05:32) – This is a good question too, and this is a lot we can talk about for prevention. This question is, “I’ve noticed that my back pain is worse after some activities. Are there some activities that I should avoid?” Well, there’s a lot of things, like heavy lifting, of course, and things like that, that can make it worse. Lifting anything, especially heavy objects, can be very bad for back pain. Sitting for long periods of time. And also some that can make it quite worse is actually poor posture. So, making sure you sit up during the day, or not even using a chair, using those balance balls that help improve your posture, all these things that help remind you to utilize your back muscles as well. And uncomfortable shoes, especially high heels. Your body isn’t made to walk that way, and that can actually cause a lot of problems with your back as well. So, lots of activities, but the overall is to focus on the prevention with your posture. With the right shoes is always very important, too. And then refrain from some basic activities like lifting heavy objects, if you are experiencing back pain.
(06:50) – The next question we have here, “What are some common therapies used to treat back pain, and do they have any side effects?” This is a great question, because there’s quite a bit of things that are used to treat back pain in the conventional medical world, but there’s also a lot of side effects that come with them. Common pain relief medications or oral medications, we have codeine, oxycodone, hydrocodone and morphine, and, yes, those can definitely help with pain, but they also come with some serious side effects like addiction, tolerance, depression, and impaired judgment. Now, you might get rid of one thing, but then you get a lot of other things that come with it too, so that makes it very difficult if you do suffer from chronic back pain. Other medications they actually use are antidepressants, anticonvulsants, and NSAIDs, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories. All of these, they also use which can help block the inflammation or treat it in different ways. But the issue is long-term use also comes with side effects with all of these. We wanna talk about some preventative ways to help with your back pain. And also some long-term strategies as well so you don’t necessarily have to go down that route.
(08:10) – And one person asked this question, which is great, “What are the ingredients in Puriya’s Ultra Relief Cream, and what are their mechanisms?” One of the main ingredients we have in the Ultra Relief Cream, which really stops the pain, is menthol. Menthol is a great cooling remedy, which helps reduce the pain sensation by blocking specific pathways. And we’ve talked about these pathways in previous Q&A sessions. But menthol can be quite powerful as the overall pain reliever in reducing that pain sensitivity and that pain sensation. We also have chamomile flower extract, which calms and can actually help reduce the inflammation. We have lavender essential oil, which works great with menthol and it can reduce the pain sensitivity. We have lemongrass essential oil, which is also great. It can help reduce the inflammation, eases anxiety.
(09:10) – We also have plant-based MSN. That actually takes the ingredients and it acts as a driver to drive it deeper down into the tissue, and then it can also be anti-inflammatory in itself as well. Also vitamin A, which has great restorative properties, vitamin C, which helps support the cartilage production, and then vitamin E, which works as a potent anti-oxidant. So, all these different things together can help reduce the pain sensation with the menthol, ease the inflammation, ease the pain response working synergistically with the lavender. And also, on our website, you can always click on the ingredients and read more about them, too, which talks about different clinical trials and different mechanisms of action. I highly recommend that as well. There is a lot of great things you can do naturally, orally, topically with the Ultra Relief Cream, and then also preventative measures as well.
(10:10) – And this is a great question, this is actually our last question today. If you do have more questions, feel free to talk to us about it, write a comment or send us an email. This question is, “What are some other ways to reduce back pain?” We could talk about this probably for hours, the other ways to reduce back pain. But some really important ones are stress reduction techniques using a mind-body approach. There’s a lot of science that talks about pain relief and how pain is very multidimensional. So, it not only affects the physical body, but it’s been shown both ways that people with depression tend to have more pain, and people who suffer from a lot of pain tend to have depression. Which came first or how it affects the other, I don’t think we totally know yet, but we do know that stress makes it worse, and depression does increase pain, make the pain feeling more prevalent. So, I think it’s very important to support the mind, the mood, mental health, as well as the physical health, because it plays such a big role in pain.
(11:19) – Also doing light exercises that can improve range of motion in a very gentle way, like Qigong, these are great things that people of all ages can do. It’s very light on the joints, and it helps keep your body moving, too, which is also very important. Also stretching before engaging in physical activity is always recommended to help loosen up your body as well, and then not over-exerting yourself, too. Knowing what your limits are, starting out slow, all of these things can really help and prevent that pain as well. And we talked about this a little earlier, avoiding wearing high heels. Wear shoes that are flat and comfortable. Your body is meant to walk in a certain way, and when you wear these horribly uncomfortable shoes that change your posture, that change so many different elements when you’re walking, it can greatly affect your back as well. So, shoes, shoes are very important as well to help with back pain.
(12:31) – Also there’s different treatments like acupuncture, which helps release energetic blockages and can also reduce pain. And then, of course, our Ultra Relief Cream, which we talked about, which can be great when you put it on, it can help ease the symptoms of that pain you’re experiencing. Here at Puriya, we believe in a holistic approach. And so with our cream, it can help the issue of the pain helping reduce it. But we also want to give you the tools, such as prevention and other things, so you don’t have to continue having this problem. Our goal is to give you everything and help address the root cause as well.
(13:16) – Okay. I’m checking to see if there’s any comments here. And I bet a lot of you guys are still recovering from the 4th of July, or maybe out camping or at barbecues, and I bet the weather is amazing through most of America, so it’s understandable if you don’t have lots of questions today. I’m sure we’re going to have lots of questions next week as well. I just want to remind you, make sure you get our amazing eBook, which talks about so many different ways for clean living and different things like talking about the “Dirty Dozen” and the “Clean 15,” which vegetables to always buy organic, and fruits, and then which vegetables and fruits maybe you could buy organic, maybe not, but it’s not as big a deal. So, all these little things that teach you about clean living, like a kitchen clean out we talk about, which has plastic versus glass. All these little things that can actually make a profound impact on your life, so I highly recommend you check that out.
(14:12) – We talked about something that 31 million Americans are suffering from right now, that 80% of Americans will have at some point in their lifetime. Just some basic things. Posture is important. Wearing the right shoes is important. Listen to your body, don’t overdo it, try to refrain from lifting things, especially heavy things, when you have back pain as well. And the overall goals, to just do light and gentle exercises. Keep moving your body as much as you can, but also be aware of when to stop and when to rest. With that, I hope all of you have an amazing weekend and had a great 4th. And I will see you next week. Don’t forget about our interview with Summer Kramer on Thursday as well. I’ll see you next week, take care.
