No matter what price you pay for over-the-counter painkillers or their prescription equivalents, please remember that the highest price you pay will likely be in terms of your health.

The fact that COX-2 inhibitors have now been found to be unsafe does not minimize the danger and potential toxicity of the NSAIDS they were designed to replace.

The fact is that all anti-inflammatory medications have the potential to kill you.

If you are in pain, I strongly recommend you consider using non-drug alternatives as a long-term and safer solution. The following suggestions tend to address the underlying cause of your pain and help your body to heal from them so the pain authentically disappears (once the cause is addressed).

How to Treat Your Pain Without Causing More Grief

• Start taking a high-quality fish or cod liver oil. Omega-3 fats, which are found in fish or cod liver oil, are precursors to mediators of inflammation called prostaglandins. In fact, that is how Vioxx and other anti-inflammatory painkillers work, they manipulate prostaglandins.

• Eliminate or radically reduce most grains and sugars from your diet. Sugar and grain avoidance for most people will lower insulin and leptin levels. Elevated insulin and leptin levels are one of the most important reasons why inflammatory prostaglandins are produced. That is why stopping sugar and sweets is so important to controlling your pain and other types of chronic illnesses.

• Optimize your production of vitamin D by getting regular, appropriate sun exposure, which will work through a variety of different mechanisms to reduce your pain.

• Retool your diet based on your body's unique metabolic type. Understanding your nutritional type is a tool I have seen work in thousands of patients to reduce their pain. Also, eating according to your nutritional type is absolutely amazing, especially when combined with an effective energy psychology tool like the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). EFT can address your previous emotional traumas that cause bioelectrical short circuiting, predisposing you to immune dysfunction. If you are not yet aware of your nutritional type, you can take our free online test now.

• There are also some safer alternatives that can help provide temporary relief for your pain while you are in the process of implementing the above strategies.

As you can see from the list above, there is no "quick fix" to treating pain, but rather it is a lifestyle change that will be well worth the effort. You can find all the details of my full program that will set you free from the "pill-taking" life and give you ultimate control of your health in my book, Total Health Program.

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