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By Cameron Salisbury Anyone who has not experienced it can’t understand what the word fatigue means to us. It’s a bottomless and pathological. Fatigue is not about being tired or sleepy, as most people think. It is not being temporarily worn out due to overwork. In fact, fatigue, as those with an autoimmune disorder know, has almost nothing to do with sleep except that we seem to need a lot of it. We can get many hours of sleep and wake up feeling too tired to get out of bed, go to work, take care of house, kids, ourselves. It can lead to lost days and weeks from our lives. It is disabling and does not respond to anti-inflammatory medications.
A look through the research literature on fatigue and Rheumatoid Arthritis makes one thing quite clear: Doctors and scientists don’t understand it. Some say that it’s related to disease activity and joint pain and some say that it can exist without pain. There seems to be no consensus about what causes, identifies, or cures fatigue, and that is probably part of the reason chronic fatigue syndrome was regarded for a long time as ‘all in our minds’.
Since there is no good research, I guess I’m free to tell you what I think.
Fatigue is part of autoimmune conditions like RA because our bodies get worn out by the struggle within, with or without pain. Even when we don’t realize it and may feel otherwise quite well, our fatigue is telling us that our health is an illusion and we need to make changes to our diet. Fatigue is no less a warning sign than pain that our bodies are having trouble maintaining equilibrium.
For me, the trigger for fatigue without pain is always the same: saturated fat. I’m so careful with my diet that fatigue is a surprise that I have to unravel. I check my journal and see if fat may have arrived from some source that I wasn’t unaware of. I may have to try eliminating more than one item, but when the riddle is solved, the fatigue vanishes.
We have to give our bodies the same 3 days to clear bad molecules (antigens) that produce only fatigue that we give to antigens in food that create pain, or pain plus fatigue.
Your source of fatigue will be unique to you, but it will resolve when you get the problem food figured out. If you have any doubt, do the 3-day fast and feel fine again. Proof once again that RA is a disease of food intolerance.
By Cameron Salisbury The Journal of Arthritis and Rheumatism reported last month that even if you are taking MTX, are symptom free, and have been pronounced in remission by your physician, you can still sustain joint damage. In the past we’ve talked about the corruption of the word ‘remission’ as it is now applied to RA. Remission used to mean a spontaneous, although possibly temporary, disappearance of symptoms. These days it means an improvement of symptoms while the person is taking drugs, and the remission goes away when the drugs are discontinued.
The now-official fact that joint damage can progress while we are taking immune system suppressors is a warning that we need to look elsewhere for permanent relief. That’s what this blog is about.
RA is not an Enbrel or MTX deficiency. It is an allergy to certain foods that our confused immune systems believe are enemies. We can heal ourselves by cooperating with our bodies instead of fighting a battle with nature that we are destined to lose.
If you would like to see the article go to this link : Joint Damage Can Progress Even in RA Remission
By Cameron Salisbury Automobile accidents are no longer the most common cause of accidental death in the U.S. That distinction now belongs to legally prescribed drugs, both prescription and over the counter.
A number of drugs on the list of horrors are used for pain control by those of us with Rheumatoid Arthritis.
We’re used to thinking that drug deaths are caused by back alley deals in smack, crystal meth or other illegal substances, but not true. The real killers are the ones prescribed legally by doctors, “… approved by the government, manufactured by pharmaceutical companies and sold to the consumer as ‘medicine.’”
In 2008, the latest year for which complete statistics are available, 41,000 people died of inadvertent drug poisoning. As the author of the study says, these deaths are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to mortality caused by modern chemistry, approved by the Food and Drug Administration, and usually classified as painkillers, sedatives or stimulants. It doesn’t include suicides, drug interactions, allergic reactions or deaths where drugs were an unidentified cause.
The common denominator among the most deadly drugs is their ability to create addiction and dependency.
Please note: All drugs, without exception, are poison and can result in deadly harm to the human body. A common cause of drug induced death is liver failure, when the liver is overwhelmed by a struggle to clear pollution from the blood and is poisoned itself. If you become ill with nausea, vomiting, or other symptoms of unknown cause, you should immediately stop taking all medication until you are well again, and then re-evalute your drug regimen.
NAUSEA IS A COMMON EARLY SYMPTOM OF LIVER FAILURE AND DARE NOT BE IGNORED.
Here is a list of drugs commonly associated with poisoning and emergency room visits in 2009, excerpted from AlterNet. Note the number of those drugs that have been prescribed for you or that you bought over-the-counter at your local drug store.
Continue reading: The Ten Most Dangerous Drugs in America
By Cameron Salisbury This physician, quoted below from a medical journal, is wow’d by the massive changes that have occurred in the treatment of RA in the past 10-20 years, meaning the increasing use of biologics. Most fascinating is his statement that standard practice in earlier years was ‘poison.’
Does it make you wonder what the current reliance on biologics will be called in the future?
He also repeats the currently popular medical dogma that biologics induce remissions. In the past the word remission meant that symptoms disappeared spontaneously. Rheumatologists today say that the vanished symptoms typical of remissions can be the result of a drug and last only as long as the patient takes the drug – and as long as the drug is effective.
That’s like saying that taking an NSAID for a strained muscle puts the strain in remission. The damage is either there or its not. Conditions like a muscle strain can be temporarily disguised by pain medication but until the muscle heals itself, there is an ongoing problem.
We’ll have to dissect the warping of the word ‘remission’ as applied to Rheumatoid Arthritis in another post.
If you go to the link below (you will have to register with Medscape) be sure to read the responses this doctor generated. Interesting.
Nathan Wei, MD, Rheumatology
When I first started practice in 1981, I pushed alot of gold, penicillamine, and other poisons I’m too embarassed to mention. Procedures like lymphapheresis and total nodal irradiation were written about. Our patients still didn’t do that great.
MTX was an improvement but biologics really chang ed the game.
Remission is expected now. In fact, if I have a patient where I don’t get at least a partial remission, I think I’m doing something wrong. I’m terribly disappointed.
By Cameron Salisbury Because research has shown for decades that Rheumatoid Arthritis is a disorder caused by food sensitivities, (also called ‘allergies’ or ‘intolerances’) we who deal with RA every day would like to know how to identify those evil-doers as quickly and easily as possible, and yesterday, please. Finding out for ourselves what is causing our problem takes dedication, a Long Time, and can be most frustrating. It seems like there should be an easy test that would answer all our questions about the foods we should avoid and make our lives Simple Again.
Well, the bad news is that there isn’t, but its not for lack of trying. All manner of skin and blood tests have been developed to isolate the markers for symptoms caused by food, and a some of them are for sale on the internet by people who should know better.
The basic problem is the complexity of our bodies. The tests are simple. Our bodies are not.
If you use medical testing to find your own food intolerances, you should be aware that the tests will always identify foods that may be causing trouble. After the test, you will indeed get a list of foods to avoid. The problem is that the food testing does not produce reliable results and chances are very good that your list will be inaccurate.
None of the tests now being used is valid to answer our question: What foods should I avoid?
Continue reading: Testing for Food Allergies ??? Not So Much.
By Cameron Salisbury As the healthy magic of minimally processed green tea has become better known, researchers have begun investigating another tea with even less processing and more anti-inflammatory properties: white tea. They can hardly believe what they are seeing.
Welcome back to the future. Tea is one of the ancient remedies used for millenia in other cultures, that is now being ‘discovered’ by Western medical research.
There are a number of kinds of tea available on grocery shelves, black, green, oolong, and, rarely so far, white. They come from the same plant and are classified according to the type and amount of processing. As we find with most plant-based foods, more nutrients are retained with less processing, although all teas are known to have health benefits.
It turns out that white tea is the earliest harvested, the least processed and retains the most anti-inflammatory properties. It also has the least caffeine.
Read this:
The researchers were blown away by exactly how well the white tea had performed. “We were testing very small amounts, far less than you would find in a drink,” Professor Naughton, …(a) specialist on inflammation, said. “The early indicators are that white tea reduces the risk of inflammation which is characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis and some cancers [especially colon and bladder cancers: editor] as well as wrinkles.”
Continue reading: “We Were Blown Away!”–Tea and RA
By Cameron Salisbury Comments from readers remind me that the problems posed by RA are complex and persistent. The words ‘just change your diet’ aren’t enough no matter how often you hear them.
This post will be a summary of what untold numbers of us have done to successfully toss RA symptoms into the trash and get on with our lives. It can be done without enriching the pharmaceutical industry or endangering ourselves by taking lethal drugs. Keep in mind the staggering amount of mostly hidden medical research that has linked food and Rheumatoid Arthritis for many decades. We are not crazy. We are on the right path.
I’m not a physician and my columns are for educational purposes only. Onward.
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1. The 3-Day Fast can seem like a miracle for those who thought their destiny was beyond their control after a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis. By the 4th day of a water-only fast, we feel completely well again. The cause of the pain, flares and fatigue, as well as the way forward, is then crystal clear. When all symptoms vanish like they never existed, we know that it is time to change our diet to accommodate our fussy immune systems.
And we got our health back without the drugs that ‘experts’ had assured us we needed. The condition is not so harrowing after all. We can control it ourselves just by eating with care and caution. What a relief!
2. The fast convinces us beyond a doubt that RA is caused by food sensitivities and we can now move on to the next step: identifying problem foods.
Unfortunately, as easy as it sounds, this is the part that can drive us to distraction, and back to the doctor’s office for a prescription for biologics.
Here’s how to avoid that fate:
3: Invest in a small spiral notebook that will fit into your purse or pocket. You will need to have it handy because you will record everything that goes into your mouth every day.
In addition to itemizing the food you eat, you will also note how you feel when you awake and go to sleep, joint by joint. Your hands, feet, knees, hips, etc, have many, many joints, any of which can be affected individually by a specific food.
If you’ve had RA for any length of time, you are familiar with flares, sudden bouts of severe pain and inflammation that seems to come out of nowhere and affect only one area of the body.
Flares occur because you happened to eat something that you are unusually sensitive to. They go away within the same 3 days as your diet changes from day to day.
4. By now you know that your RA problem is actually a food sensitivity problem and you’ve bought yourself a good little notebook.
What next?
Continue reading: How to Eliminate Rheumatoid Arthritis Symptoms: A Summary
By Cameron Salisbury It’s happened again. An acquaintance told me about his mother’s death which was attributed to pneumonia. What actually happened was that her prescription medication made her so sick that she vomited and aspirated, which means that she inhaled the gunk from her stomach into her lungs causing her lungs to fill with fluid. That allowed her death to enter the world of mortality statistics as pneumonia when the true cause — prescribed pharmaceuticals– remains hidden.
. . . sigh . . . .
Side effects are built into every drug we take, no exceptions. The side effects may seem minor, like insomnia or anemia, or we may know immediately that we’re in trouble.
Lethal side effects may occur suddenly and without warning, like the bleed-outs caused by aspirin and other NSAIDS or the liver failure associated with acetaminophen (Tylenol).
My suggestion for dealing with side effects is to stop taking the drugs. Why endanger your life when you can eliminate the inflammation of Rheumatoid Arthritis, and most likely other inflammatory autoimmune conditions, by changing your diet. Yes, it can take some effort, but it is free and will not kill you.
Pharmaceuticals, on the other hand, are exactly the opposite. They cost a fortune and may kill you, as they have thousands of others, but taking a pill requires no effort.
You have to choose.
Until you have removed pharmaceuticals from your life, here are some suggestions for dealing with side effects from people who know a lot about drug side effects: the Arthritis Foundation, with my critique, of course.
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Here are some safe and workable suggestions for handling the side effects of NSAIDS:
–Take the medication with food.
–Take a once-daily NSAID in the afternoon or evening, instead of the morning.
— Avoid alcohol. Alcohol mixed with NSAIDs can increase gastric bleeding to even higher levels.
— Avoid taking an NSAID with another medication, such as a cold remedy, which could also contain an NSAID and increase your risk of ulcers.
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The suggestions below involve adding more drugs to a regimen that is already making you sick. Remember, the more drugs you take the better your chances for disaster. We should scoff at suggestions like these:
–Take NSAIDs with a drug that reduces stomach acid. These come in two types and include cimetidine (Tagamet), ranitidine hydrochloride (Zantac), esomeprazole (Nexium), lansoprazole (Prevacid) and omeprazole (Prilosec).
– Switch from an oral DMARD to an injected form. For severe problems, ask about anti-nausea and vomiting drugs such as granisetron (Kytril) or metoclopramide (Reglan).
– Add misoprostal (Cytotec) to reduce the risk of stomach ulcers and promote healing of existing ulcers. Misoprostol comes in a combination product called Arthrotec, which also contains the NSAID diclofenac sodium.
My Note: Research has shown that Diclofenac may be the most dangerous NSAID on the market. See other posts under the tab ‘Medical Headlines Translated’ on this site.
– Switch to celecoxib (Celebrex), a type of NSAID called a COX-2 that has less risk of stomach ulcers.
MY NOTE: Celebrex vastly increases the risk of heart attack, stroke and a serious allergic skin reaction called Stevens Johnson Syndrome (SJS). It’s relative, Vioxx, was withdrawn from the market and there has been talk of also withdrawing Celebrex and other COX-2 inhibitors like Bextra because of their danger. Less risk of stomach ulcer does not make a safe drug. Shame on the Arthritis Foundation for this suggestion.
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Side effect: Insomnia from corticosteroids and prednisone.
Solution:
— Take a once-daily dose in the morning.
— Avoid stimulants such as caffeine that exacerbate sleeplessness.
MY NOTE: Steroids are so dangerous, and so interfere with normal cell function, that they should never be used outside of a life-threatening emergency. Short term use of steroids can cause cataracts, glaucoma, high blood pressure, swelling of limbs, and fat redistribution on the body. Long term use can result in bone and skin thinning, diabetes, interfere with wound healing and can disable the the immune system and the adrenals, something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
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Side effect: Dry mouth from antidepressants, narcotic analgesics
Solution:
— Moisten your mouth with sugar-free gum or hard candies, or by sucking on ice chips.
— Try saliva substitutes, such as Salivart, Xerolube or Glandosan.
— Avoid alcohol or alcohol-containing mouthwashes that can make dry mouth worse.
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Side effect: Mouth ulcers due to methotrexate
Solutions:
–Avoid salty or spicy foods or excess citrus fruits that can irritate ulcers
–Try topical pain relievers such as Oragel or Zilactin or ask your doctor or dentist about a prescription rinse or mouthwash to help ulcers heal.
By Cameron Salisbury A food diary, also called a food journal or a food log, is recommended for a long list of reasons. Food journals are often used to monitor nutrition (are you getting enough fiber? Vitamin A?) or, commonly, for weight loss to keep track of calories.
But it is also recommended increasingly to monitor disease activity. Web sites for Crohns Disease, kidney disease, Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD) , Ulcerative Colitis, acid reflux, Celiac Disease, Fibromyalgia, Diabetes, allergies, and more, are making the crucial connection between what we eat and our health.
Nowhere is that connection better established than with Rheumatoid Arthritis. An accumulating body of research as well as our own experience indicates clearly that Rheumatoid Arthritis is a disorder caused by food intolerance.
As discussed in other recent posts, the key to vanquishing RA is the rotation diet, eating any food no more often than once every four days. This eliminates the problem of low level reactions to minimally hazardous foods that build in our bodies until our immune system can no longer ignore them. The rotation diet gives our bodies the time it needs to clear the food molecules that disrupt our immune system before adding more of them.
The way to maintain a successful rotation diet is to maintain an accurate food diary.
Here’s how to do it:
Continue reading: Key to a ‘Cure’ for Rheumatoid Arthritis: The Food Diary
By Cameron Salisbury In addition to foods that our immune system hates instantly and cause immediate inflammation and fatigue, there are also those that it hates just a little and will ignore as long as it can. So if those semi-tolerated foods are eaten only once or twice a week, no problem. The problem starts when they are eaten more often than once every three or four days. That’s when our immune systems start to scream ‘Stop It! I’ve put up with this as long as I can!’
Foods that cause immediate illness are reasonably easy to figure out: you haven’t eaten it until recently and now you feel awful. Or, every time you eat it you feel awful. If you have been keeping a food journal you know quickly which food is causing the out-of-control inflammation.
More difficult to get a handle on is the second category of food intolerance: low level sensitivity. If we’ve eaten the same food in the past without problem and now we feel sick, how do we know what caused it?
The truth is that we don’t have to know what caused the flare.
Since most of our RA symptoms are caused by low level food intolerance, the solution is to give our bodies time, about 3 days, to eliminate food molecules (antigens) before we eat that food again. All we have to do is keep an eating schedule that doesn’t repeat any food more often than once, maybe twice, a week.
How to do that? Below are some food choices that can be rotated at 4 day intervals. You might find that some are safe to eat more often and some you shouldn’t eat at all, but this diet can easily be a life long, easily tolerated, and very successful change to our eating habits and our health.
Continue reading: Healing Rheumatoid Arthritis: Refining the Rotation Diet
By Cameron Salisbury The collection of advice about RA flares found in a search of Google predictably misses the mark. What we call ‘flares’ can affect almost anyone with an autoimmune disorder and are well known to those with Rheumatoid Arthritis. They are a sudden increase in inflammatory symptoms, pain, fatigue, swollen joints, any or all of the above.
If you believe what you read in articles posted on Google and at the Arthritis Foundation, you will think that flares are an unpredictable act of God over which you are helpless. Since ‘experts’ on RA are all very well versed in pharmaceuticals, their advice is always the same: increase or change your meds until you regain control.
That advice is complete and undiluted hogwash.
It is especially disappointing coming from the Arthritis Foundation’s publication Arthritis Today which recently ran an article entitled Rheumatoid Arthritis Diet: RA and Food Allergies concluding: “A new study suggests that food allergies may be linked to RA, after all.”
Continue reading: Rheumatoid Arthritis and Flares: The Real Story
By Cameron Salisbury One of the things we who are affected fear most is passing Rheumatoid Arthritis on to our children and grandchildren. So, exactly how frightened should we be?
I’ve told my daughter to quit worrying about her health inheritance for several reasons.
She’s seen me deal with the condition every day since she was 10, 17 years ago. She saw the early pain, swollen joints and fatigue. She attended doctors’ appointments with me when I was getting cortisone injections in my hands. She’s seen the worst but that was so long ago I don’t think she remembers much of it now. What she clearly remembers is the way I live today: taking care daily about what I eat and the fatigue that sets in if I cut too many corners.
She was an eye witness to the miraculous change in my life after I learned once and for all that Rheumatoid Arthritis was effectively a food allergy disease and very controllable.
She has been there as I worked (and played) every day. She and I have traveled extensively. She knows that, after the initial trauma of the diagnosis and despite the continuing upkeep, there has been no change whatever in my daily routine. And she knows deep down that she can handle her life, too.
In the ‘My Story’ articles posted here, I document my early ups and downs, my lack of confidence in the beginning for the solution I had found, and how I finally began living the right answer: diet modification.
Continue reading: Hereditary Rheumatoid Arthritis ?? Will We Pass It On?
By Cameron Salisbury The real problem with Rheumatoid Arthritis is not the diagnosis and it’s not the condition itself inhabiting our bodies. Rheumatoid Arthritis is simply the name given to a condition of chronic inflammation where the immune system, designed to be one of our best friends, gets completely confused and turns against us.
It’s inflammation that has led researchers to say that the average work life after a diagnosis of Rheumatoid Arthritis is only ten years.
It’s inflammation that causes the degradation of the joints that can lead to disability.
It’s inflammation that makes us vulnerable to horrendously expensive and harmful toxins, known as biologics, that only, in the end, benefit the pharmaceutical company. Because our bodies will always, sooner or later, develop a tolerance to any drug that attempts to override its own programming, pharmaceuticals will never overcome the pain and destructive capacity of RA for long. Drugs, no matter how effective they seem at first, are never the long term solution to the problem.
The good news is that none of that matters because we can heal ourselves, permanently and cost free.
Once diagnosed with RA, our primary goal should be to learn how to disable the inflammatory response, which will eliminate the swelling, pain, fatigue and joint destruction – all the symptoms of RA.
Controlling run-amuck inflammation is the key to our entire future. And the way to control it is always the same: Figure out what is causing it and stop.
Continue reading: Controlling RA Inflammation: Some Lists to Get You Started
By Cameron Salisbury Strange and scary things can happen to the human body when it has Rheumatoid Arthritis, as though it has a secret mind of its own and it’s not sharing with you.
But, really no need be frightened by the unexpected doings of your body.
Eventually you’ll reach the point that you attribute any new symptom to the disorder and you’ll know instantly how to handle it without adjusting medication or getting cortisone shots. You’ll just check your journal for anything unusual you’ve eaten recently, you’ll eliminate it, wait a few days, and it goes away. For as long as you stay away from whatever food caused the complication, it won’t come back.
Cases in point are Rheumatoid nodules and vasculitis, both of which are fairly unusual side effects of RA caused by out of control inflammation.
Rheumatoid nodules are bumps under the skin that can appear at pressure points like the elbow. They can be annoying and occasionally painful but are not serious. They are more an indication that you should be doing more to help your immune system deal with the source of the problem: food. As you know from this blog, RA is the result of an immune system seriously annoyed by what you’ve been eating. All symptoms vanish once you learn how to work with it and stay away from foods that tick it off.
Vasculitis is an inflammation of the blood vessels and is well worth learning to avoid. While nodules can seem like a gentle reminder to eat differently, vasculitis can be regarded as a warning. It is a rare side effect of RA that affects blood vessels anywhere from the skin, where it can look like a rug burn, to the heart where it may show up as pericarditis, as pain in the arm, leg or anywhere else. If you have RA and unexplained pain that does not appear related to your joints, it may be vasculitis.
Continue reading: Rheumatoid Nodules, Vasculitis: More of the Same
By Cameron Salisbury I thought I’d tell you a little about the reception this web site has had since I started posting about a year ago.
There have been some wonderful success stories where someone decided to look for a different answer than the one handed to them by physicians, and, rather than rely on a succession of lethal and ultimately ineffective drugs to handle Rheumatoid Arthritis, found permanent health by modifying their diet.
Like Jen, who had been suffering with RA for three years and, rather than begin a new biologic to replace the one she had been taking which had lost its effectiveness, she decided to take matters into her own hands and do some research.
She found us and others online who encouraged her to find her own way and assured her that she could indeed triumph over a dreaded disease by making different food choices.
Like all of us who have made the leap from flares, fear and fatigue to good health, Jen has to handle the ups and downs and complexities of learning to work with her immune system by finding the right changes to her diet. As food growing and processing methods change, as well as our bodies over time, control can seem like an ongoing work in progress.
But the same is true of the deadly drugs that are the current medical alternative. After the immune system is disabled by biologics, it adapts to the circumstances in the body and comes roaring back again. The drug in use then becomes ineffective and we have to either increase the dose or find a new drug and start the process over again. That is why the users of pharmaceuticals have to change drugs so often.
There will never be a time when the user of a biologic can assume that a prescribed drug has solved the problem forever. That person will always, at some point, need a new drug. Big Pharma, as hard as it tries, can hardly keep up and new immune system supressors seem to show up daily.
Sooner or later the rope will run out and biologics will no longer be regarded as the solutiion so many today think they have found.
Not all of those who landed on this website have had the reaction that Jen did.
Continue reading: “Food Fixes RA? Maybe for You But Not for Me.”
By Cameron Salisbury There is always mention of ‘leaky gut’ whenever there is a discussion of RA. According to most physicians it is strictly a theory and one that’s not very relevant at that. (You expected something else?) But according to many with autoimmune disorders, it is a fact of life.
Who should we believe, how do we fix it, and what difference does it make?
The concept of ‘leaky gut’ is finally receiving attention from researchers as it becomes clear that every molecule in the body is related to every other in a dynamic balancing act. No part of our bodies functions in a vacuum and nothing about it is simple. The intestinal tract, it is now known, is not a disinterested bystander that stands back while nutrients make a dash for the blood stream. Through a complex barrier mechanism, it controls the equilibrium in the gut. When this dance is disrupted in the genetically susceptible and large molecules reach the bloodstream before processing is completed in the gut, autoimmune disorders can occur or become worse – our immune system’s attempt to cope with the unexpected.
Leaky gut results from defects in the intestinal barrier which allow particles of food, medicine or bacteria to permeate the gut and move into the blood stream and surrounding tissue. It has been observed in a number of bowel disorders such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and is now becoming evident in the pathology of gastrointestinal diseases, cardiovascular disease, and other acute and chronic diseases including RA.
Continue reading: Leaky Gut and Rheumatoid Arthritis
By Cameron Salisbury An article in Science Daily says that a derivative of the popular Middle Eastern spice turmeric, or curcumin, its active ingredient, shows promise for repairing damage due to stroke.
The medicinal properties of turmeric have been known since ancient times in Southeast Asia. It has been used as an antiseptic for cuts, burns and bruises, as an antibacterial agent and as an anti-inflammatory recommended for Rheumatoid Arthritis. It has also been used as a remedy for irritable bowel syndrome and other gastrointestinal conditions and is now being studied for possible use in cancer, Alzheimers, and AIDS in addition to stroke.
If it sounds like turmeric is a wonder drug, it is. And there are others just like it. The reason I include it on a site devoted to Rheumatoid Arthritis is that spices and other botanicals can be little miracles just waiting to be discovered.
My friend Maria had a chronic asthma-related cough for many years that numerous doctors had been unable to fix. She called it her air pollution cough, since anything floating in the air, like cigarette smoke, diesel exhaust or perfume, set it off. It was so constant and so intense that she thought she was headed to an early disability retirement. To control the severe hacking she was taking theophylline, a prescription drug that comes with a warning of possible sudden death. It was only marginally useful for her cough.
On an extended car trip one day she took ginger to control motion sickness. The ginger worked the way it was supposed to and eliminated her nausea, but something else happened. To her stunned amazement, her cough vanished.
She and I combed the medical literature and searched for anecdotal evidence but could find no mention anywhere that ginger could affect an asthmatic, chronic cough. We began to think that Maria had found magic that was unique to herself. But that wasn’t true.
Eventually we unearthed the rest of the story. In addition to its many well-known medicinal properties, including as an anti-inflammatory, ginger has another characteristic that is less known. It is a powerful anti-spasmodic, which is why it calmed her cough. How many other spasm-related conditions could this simple spice, easily available and found in most kitchen pantries, cure if more people knew?
Strictly by accident, Maria had stumbled into her own personal miracle. And that is my point. Expect a miracle. You never know when one is waiting in plain sight for you to show up.
Continue reading: Herbs, Spices, Botanicals: Expect a Miracle
By Cameron Salisbury TV personality Deborah Norville said that her mother died prematurely “from Rheumatoid Arthritis.”
With all due respect to Ms Norville, no one dies from RA. Like osteoarthritis and many other non-fatal conditions among the genetically susceptible (e.g., Down’s Syndrome, mental illnesses), RA is more a disorder and less a disease.
All of us who live with the condition will die ‘with RA’ just as we will die ‘with a liver’, ‘with a brain’, ‘with fingernails.’ RA is not in the same mortality category as diabetes or stroke, leading causes of death listed on death certificates.
Nevertheless, Rheumatoid Arthritis can be a contributing factor to death from other causes, generally inflammation-related, but one is hard pressed to find any records listing RA as a cause of death by itself. In this list of annual causes of mortality, RA is conspicuously absent.
Any number of studies have concluded that those of us with Rheumatoid Arthritis are doomed to die several years before we would otherwise, usually, they say, from cardiovascular disease (CVD). In vanishingly rare instances inflammation resulting from the disease attacks a vital organ like the heart and the patient may die. Even then the cause of death is inflammation officially coded, for example, as ‘pericarditis,’ not Rheumatoid Arthritis.
It’s clear that a major problem is inflammation. But it’s not the only problem. The other big cause of death for us is the drugs we take, both over the counter and prescription.
Continue reading: Early Death and Rheumatoid Arthritis
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How I Fixed RA I get questions every week asking what alternatives I recommend to heal Rheumatoid Arthritis or other autoimmune, inflammatory, disorder. Something seems to be getting lost in the clutter. So I am moving the main, bedrock, articles to the tabs at the top of this page, where they may be more visible.
Updated Pages Periodically this site is updated with new pages added to the 'Diet and Research', 'Medical Headlines', or other tabs at the top. Check them out.
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