Arthritis Archives

Arthritis Common Sense (Archive.)

Thanks, Misty.

Namaste`

Walt

This title was just too cute!!
Any nutritionalists out there like to comment on this?
Anyone else?
Be Well,
Misty
http://www.searching-alternatives.com

Arthritis is not caused by aspirin deficiency

ARTHRITIS: THERE'S MORE YOU CAN DO THAN JUST LEARN TO LIVE WITH IT
By the time you are 88 years old, you have consumed 300
tons of food, air and water.
(R. Buckminster Fuller)

http://www.doctoryourself.com/arthritis_II.html

ARTHRITIS AND DIET

It is party-line medical doctrine that there is little or no
connection between arthritis and nutrition. That belief belongs on
the agenda of the next World-Is-Flat Society meeting. We truly are
what we eat. We started from a union of two tiny half-cells. All
that we are today, our trillions and trillions of cells, results from
the molecules we've accumulated from breathing, drinking, and eating
our food.

How can arthritis, or any other disease for that matter, be unrelated
to diet?
Naturopaths hold that the etiology of arthritis parallels a history
of bad diet. You will
rarely see an arthritic patient that is not a cooked-food-and-meat-
eater.

Proof exists, and plenty of it. Francis M. Pottenger, M.D. did
nutritional experiments on hundreds of cats over a period of two
decades. He found that cats fed our typical cooked diet did in fact
develop many degenerative diseases, including arthritis. What is
especially interesting is that Dr. Pottenger found you could reverse
the condition by feeding the animals only fresh, raw foods.
(References are available from the Price-Pottenger Nutrition
Foundation, La Mesa, CA 92041)

ARTHRITIS AND CALCIUM

The Arthritis Foundation has stated that the average adult eats only
about 550 milligrams or so of calcium daily. The US Recommend Daily
Allowance is between 800 and 1200 mg/day, and that itself may be to
low. Everyone knows that arthritis, whether rheumatoid or
osteoarthritis, is related to bones and joints... and so is what they
are largely made out of: calcium. Nationwide calcium deficiency, and
NO arthritis connection with diet? How curious.

If most adults are deficient in calcium intake, no wonder there are
joint and bone problems in America.

Calcium deposits or degeneration of the joints themselves may both be
seen as two aspects of a common disease if one will rise above a
craving for differential diagnosis. It often surprises practitioners
to discover that people with calcium deposits are actually as calcium
deficient as those people that are losing bone mass. Remember:
excess dietary calcium does NOT cause calcium deposits. Excess
calcium is simply not absorbed, and is excreted in the feces. It is
a lack of calcium in the diet that causes calcium deposits.

Two quick calcium supplementation suggestions:
1. Take an easily absorbed form of calcium, such as calcium citrate
or calcium lactate.
2. Divide the dose. Absorption is best if you don't take all your
calcium at once.

ARTHRITIS AND VITAMIN C

Deficiency of vitamin C-rich citrus fruits has been known to produce
scurvy since 1753, over 250 years ago. One of the chief symptoms of
scurvy is profound joint troubles. Sailors with scurvy used to be
heard literally rattling as they walked on deck. At that time, no
one believed that there was any connection between diet and joint
disorders, either. Then ship's surgeon James Lind cured the
condition in two weeks with just one lemon and two oranges a day.

"Arth-" means joint and "-itis" means inflammation. It would be
asking a lot of a few pieces of fruit to cure it. However, really
large doses of vitamin C have been shown to reduce all forms of
inflammation throughout the body. The joints are no exception. For
someone who has never experienced it, it is hard to believe that
simple vitamin C can help where medicines have not. No belief is
necessary; the proof is in trying it. The amount of vitamin C needed
is the amount that will get the job done. You take enough C to be
symptom-free, whatever the amount might be. You do not take the
amount of vitamin C that you think should help; you take the amount
that DOES help. (There are other vitamin C related articles posted
at this website.)

In addition to reducing inflammation, vitamin C also helps form
collagen, the protein "glue" that holds cells together. Collagen is
especially important in connective tissue to insure healthy
ligaments, cartilage, tendons and the joints themselves. Scurvy,
exemplified by our rattling sailor mentioned earlier, is what happens
to joints when vitamin C levels are inadequate. If you think scurvy
is extinct in modern life, may I remind you that William J.
McCormick, M.D. showed that every cigarette smoked robs the body of
25 mg. of vitamin C. That is a 500 mg deficit "each day" from only
one pack daily. With a US RDA of only 60 mg per day, we can see that
scurvy is not only possible but likely in the nearly 29 million
Americans who still smoke.

Without ENOUGH vitamin C collagen cannot be properly
made. "Abnormalities in this protein (collagen) are basic to the
crippling deformities associated with rheumatic diseases." (Rivers,
J.M. "Ascorbic Acid in Metabolism of Connective Tissue," New York
State Journal of Medicine, vol 65: pp 1235-1238, 1965) The key is
to "use" enough. Studies showing little vitamin C benefit generally
employed only a few hundred milligrams of C daily. "Thousands" of
milligrams, at least, are required for clinical improvement. Back in
1950, 4,000 mg was shown to be effective by B. F. Massell
("Antirheumatic Activity of Ascorbic Acid in Large Doses," New
England Journal of Medicine, vol. 242: pp 614-615). In Germany in
1952, Baufeld used 6,000 mg daily, often by injection. ("Ascorbic
Acid in the Treatment of Polyarthritis," Deutsche Gesundheitswesen
(Berlin), vol. 7, p 1077.) In 1953, Greer used 8,000 to 12,000 mg per
day. (Medical Times, vol. 81 pp. 483-484.) It may well take more
than that for some patients.

Arthritis is not caused by aspirin deficiency. It may indeed be
caused by nutritional deficiency. That is how Dr. Pottenger produced
arthritis in cats only on a cooked (read "vitamin C deficient")
diet.

"There can be no doubt," writes biochemist Irwin Stone, "about the
intimate association of ascorbic acid (vitamin C) and the collagen
diseases." (The Healing Factor, Grosset and Dunlap, 1972, p. 109) A
person with arthritis seems to require vastly more vitamin C to
correct the problem than the deficiency it took to cause it.

B-VITAMINS AND ARTHRITIS

Look at the work of William Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D. This physician
suspected an arthritis-diet deficiency connection and acted on it.
One of Dr. Kaufman's primary tools was niacinamide, (or niacin,
vitamin B-3). He gave 250 milligrams of niacinamide (the form of
niacin that does not cause a warm flush) every 1 1/2 hours for a
daily total of ten doses. That is 2,500 mg. a day, not at all more
than many doctors today prescribe to lower serum cholesterol. The
results was improved grip strength and joint mobility. Dr. Kaufman
went on to treat close to one thousand patients with niacinamide plus
the B-vitamins thiamin (B-1), riboflavin (B-2), pyridoxine (B-6) and
pantothenic acid. It will not surprise you that he also gave large
doses of vitamin C. What will surprise you is that he started using
vitamins to successfully treat arthritis as early as 1935, and niacin
in 1937, immediately after it was identified. (Journal of the
International Academy of Preventive Medicine, Winter, 1983.)

One cannot help but wonder why vitamin therapies are not used
everywhere today if they were so helpful in the 1930's. Have
vitamins mysteriously lost their value, or could it be that they are
cheap and provide no profit incentive for large pharmaceutical
companies?

Dr. John M. Ellis, a physician in Texas, published an entire book on
vitamin B-6 (pyridoxine) in 1983 entitled Free of Pain (Dallas:
Southwest Publishing). Linus Pauling reports in How To Live Longer
and Feel Better (1986) that Ellis found that "B-6 shrinks the
synovial membranes that line the weight-bearing surfaces of the
joints. It thus helps to control pain and to restore mobility in the
elbows, shoulders, knees and other joints." While very large doses
of B-6 alone may cause transient neurological side effects,
relatively modest doses of around 75 to 300 mg daily are very safe.
The
safety of one B-vitamin is magnified by giving it with the rest of
the B-complex.

What should the arthritic person be eating? Perhaps we may reduce
this discussion to the following protocol:

* Primarily raw food diet including cultured dairy products such
as cheese and yogurt
* 75 to 300 mg B-6 daily, preferably with a B-complex supplement
* Niacinamide every two hours or so, up to a thousand milligrams
or more daily
* Vitamin C to saturation (as much as the body will hold without
loose bowels)

In healing, I think it is important not only to know what to do, but
also to know WHY you are doing it. "Here, take these" is not good
medicine even if "these" are vitamins. You will want to do
additional reading, beginning with the references cited above, on
ascorbic acid (vitamin C), niacinamide (vitamin B-3) and pyridoxine
(B-6) The benefits of a primarily raw food diet is discussed in
Kulvinskas, Viktoras (1975) Survival into the 21st Century
(Wethersfield, CT: Omangod Press); and Wigmore, Ann (1964) Why
Suffer? (NY: Hemisphere Press); and Wigmore, Ann (1983) Be Your Own
Doctor (Garden City Park, NY: Avery.)

A more complete understanding makes for a more complete cure.

God bless,
Kandy

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