Please note that Pregnenolone is a steroid hormone. Hormones are vastly powerful. Be sure to check with your doctor before using anything that contains hormones. Only a chemist or doctor can determine how medications you may be taking would interact with a hormone, even a hormone advertised as coming from natural sources.

Most of my life I have worked graveyard – driving around town. I listen to talk radio. And the resulting alternative medicine shows.
As a result I have found ONE product that I love using on my hands and knees “Dr. Janet’s Dual Action Transdermal Glucosamine Cream with EMU Oil… For me it actually works as advertised.

I cannot use anything with menthol or anytype of pepper.

Thanks
Debra

I also have a quick story that I can share about drugs in sport.

I actually did a presentation about “The Future of Sports” and I concentrated on drugs as the main topic. As I researched, I found forums upon forums upon web pages that appalled me. On every forum I found, there were actually people begging to try anything!!!

This resulted in me finding websites that actually compared fakes to the real thing when it came to drugs (visual comparisons, never mind the ingredients). The sites also referenced masking agents and pain killers that can help deal with the pain of taking the performance enhancing drugs. UNBELIEVABLE!!

Needless to say, I toned it down (a little) for my students and presented them with videos of professional athletes suffering serious injuries during a game. They were escorted back to their change rooms and brought back out in minutes with “miraculous tape jobs/recoveries”. There is only one answer – DRUGS!!

Healing takes time!

Ken, your mention of giving the body time to rest and heal made me remember a time I was sent to a sports medicine center for therapy. I was the only woman being treated there at the time. One day a therapist said to me, “There are men all over the country who’d give their right hand to be in the same room with the guys you’re in therapy with!” I asked him why, and he said “These are some of the most famous sports stars in the world!” I asked him why these famous men came in and out of therapy in a couple of weeks, while I was there month after month. He said “If you were losing millions of dollars every week you didn’t work, they’d find a way to get you out of here just as fast. They pump these guys up with steroids and all sorts of things. But don’t envy them. Most of them will be crippled by the time they’re forty.” Sadly, I re-met one of those famous men ten years later. We were both working on a charity event. He told me he was so crippled with pain he sometimes considered suicide. Team owners pushed and pushed him to heal fast and get back to work, and as a young man he had no way of knowing the awful price he would pay.

The often-bogus ebooks being sold on the internet have no background. Often even the ownership of the web site or sales page is disguised. And this material is marketed in a significantly different way than drugstore/TV items, usually by people joining forums and blogs so they can chat about “I found this wonderful book!” and send people off to what’s actually their sales page. When people hear TV commercials, they know they are being “sold to.” They’re much more likely to let their guard down when they think they’re chatting with friends.

People who’ve hurt for a long time do usually become less gullible. I did, with time. But my experience has been that people who have just been injured or just been diagnosed with any painful disease WILL jump at straws. Especially when you have doctor after doctor telling you “It’s all in your head,” as so many of us do, you can quickly be pushed to jump at straws.

Then, too, there’s the effect of pain medications, which can cloud the judgment. I was over-medicated for 2 years and made some very disastrous choices during that time. All this is why I so strongly encourage people to do these simple Google searches before buying anything-
Name of products + reviews
Name of products + studies
Name of product + complaints

I don’t disagree with anything you say, but I don’t see a significant difference between the email you received – I get ~20 a week – and OTC meds, TV commercials – particularly the, “Ask your doctor,” commercials! – or even selecting a health care professional you can live with.

Bottom line, it’s my pain, and I’m the one who has to choose how to deal with it, ya know?

While I agree that there are the gullible few out there, most of the folk I know who have to deal with regular pain have become pretty sharp about it … they want more than just a bald statement before they invest their time and energy – money tends to be a poor third here, although it is important – in a product.

Hey, don’t sell us short just because we hurt. We’ve, most of us, hurt too long to grab at every straw that comes along … we want a bit of testing and proof before we bite into the apple .

I cannot agree more. As a Sports Medicine, Athletic Director and Basketball Coach, I am always trying to find and subscribe to quality information products such as your blog, magazines and newsletters.

In the classroom, I really need to monitor the “crap” out of the students when it comes to research. I know you would believe the amount of information out there that is just not true!!

One of the problems I see is that people are looking for instant answers in an age where instant information is easy to get – good or bad.

Getting and feeling better takes time and effort. The old saying of RICE (Rest Ice Compression Elevation) is so important in so many ways. The first letter says it all “R” = Rest! Most people forget that when their bodies are in trauma and/or pain, they need to let their bodies analize the pain and recover from it. For many people conventional therapies and remedies just do not work. We need to encourage them to keep on trying to find something that will help them with their pain!

I think you are doing a great job weeding through the BS!!

Ken