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Arthritis |
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Arthritis |
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It was the 1980's:
disco was still considered music, and arthritis was still said to have no
nutritional connection or cure. For centuries, natural healing practitioners
have known otherwise. Today, more and more, the medical profession is finally
catching on. But Mrs. Kelremor had waited long
enough. She said to me, in her thick Transylvanian accent: "I can't vork. I can't svleep.
I om in pain all oof da time." I vill now drop the accent; you get the picture. Mrs. Kelremor bowed her curly, gray-haired head as she
continued speaking. "Look at my
hands. I can't close them anymore. Look at my knees, all
swollen. I am sore all over."
As if that were not
enough, she showed me an assortment of lumps on her arms and legs. Her
medico had told her they were benign. They certainly were not pleasant
to behold. "What can I
do?" she said. "My husband does not work. I have to
work. I have to clean." I said that she
might want to try a real dietary overhaul, beginning with vegetable juice
fasting. There is a fine line between irresponsible promises and
stimulating encouragement. I attempted to straddle that line by telling
her that she had little to risk with vegetables. She looked up, for
the first time during the interview, and slowly said, "I will try
anything." Anything? Even
living on raw vegetable juices eight days in a row, followed by a very light
eating for three days, and a raw-food diet for the next ten? "Yes,"
she said. "Anything." The drop-out rate
in such a program is high. That is probably the only true drawback of
such an otherwise venerable, simple and safe program. To many, juice fasting conjures up images of starvation,
electrolyte imbalance, malnutrition and exhaustion. All false, and for
very elementary reasons. Firstly, vegetables
are especially nourishing foods, and a variety of vegetables guarantees more
than adequate nutrition. The fact that they are juiced does not change
that. Secondly, you cannot hurt yourself with produce. There is no
down side to a vegetable diet, particularly when accompanied with a couple of
good multivitamin pills each day. Thirdly, look at the animal
kingdom. Elephants are huge and muscular, with bones like tree
trunks. They eat leaves and roots and shoots. They clearly get
enough protein and calcium. So will you. In So adequate
nutrition, really far more than adequate nutrition, can be maintained for
weeks at a time on veggies alone. "But why juice? Why not just eat
the vegetables?" Because you won't, that's why. Juicing guarantees
quantity. If you juice, you simply will consume more vegetables.
It is quicker and easier to down the juice than to sit and munch, so you will
consume more. Additionally, the absorption of juiced vegetables is
excellent, far superior to what you can get after just using your choppers to
chew. Not being ruminants, like cows or giraffes, we get only one chance to
masticate our food. A juicer does the job vastly better. So that's it,
then. A safe therapy that is too simple to work. But it does. And
the wretchedly bent-over Mrs. Kelremor was willing
to try it. Not without a
fight, however. For weeks, I got her phone calls. "Can I have
soup?" Sure, if it will please you. "Can I have some
sausage?" No. "Can I cook some of the
vegetables?" Some vegetables have to be cooked, such as sweet
potatoes, and moving away from a strict meaning of the word vegetable, lima
beans and rice. If some of these foods will keep a person on the
program, fine. Vegetable juices should still be the focus and the bulk
of every meal. "Every
meal?" you, and Mrs. Kelremor
would say. "Even breakfast?" Look, folks: For
breakfast, we drink hot bean extract and eat undeveloped bird embryos and the
ripened ovaries of trees. We eat the muscles of
ground up dead pigs placed between pulverized seeds fermented with a
fungus, with a slice of curdled cow breast milk. And if I suggest
vegetable juices, I'm the oddball? So I conceded this
and that to insure her compliance. Don't sweat the small stuff. After a
quarter-century as a health consultant, I know people. Mrs. Kelremor's calls persisted, at various times of the day.
At least I knew she was on the program. Over time, they were fewer and
fewer. She seemed to be doing fine.
A year passed. One day I was
shopping in a friend's health food store. There were a few people at the
check-out counter. One was a tallish lady, or if not tall, she certainly
had very good posture. "Remember
me?" she said, with the unmistakable voice of Bela
Legosi on estrogen. I recalled only the
voice. It did not match this graceful woman, at ease and smiling,
buying a counter full of vitamins. But it was Mrs. Kelremor. I greeted her, and
she wasted no time in telling me: "I can
work. I can bend, and reach, and sit and stand, and walk without any pain. I
can work! I feel like a new woman."
She actually said
something more like, "I veel loke new voman," but
enough of that. I couldn't help but
notice that the lumps on her arms and legs were gone. It wasn't surgery; a
year and a half of juicing had apparently eradicated them. Now that was
a bit unexpected. And all this
progress, past age 80. I saw something similar with a woman half her
age. The early forties is a bit young for rheumatoid arthritis, especially
arthritis as severe as Cynthia's. Mostly I remember her hands. They were
an old lady's hands on a middle-aged woman's body. Swollen knuckles,
fingers tightly drawn together to a point, almost like a paintbrush. Cynthia
could hardly move them, and never without pain. The doctors, and there
had been many, had all told her that there was nothing that could be
done. Well, pain killers, but nothing else. Diet, perhaps? she'd asked them. Of course not, they'd told her. She disbelieved
them just enough to come and see me. I suggested that
she do the same thing as Mrs. K. had done, and hope for the same results. "And you are
so much younger than her," I added. "Perhaps you have an advantage
there." At the very least,
she complained a lot less. I had just one or two conversations with her
on the phone over the next many months.
It was about
eighteen months later when I actually saw Cynthia again in person. She
had scheduled a follow-up appointment and breezed through the door into my
office. "Hi!" she
said. "Hello!"
I answered. But who are you? is what I
thought. Now I do not have a good head for names or faces to begin with,
but this was extraordinary. I really thought there had been a mistake. I
had gotten my appointment book messed up. This could not be
Cynthia. I was expecting someone else, someone with at least some signs
of arthritis. This woman had none.
"Look!"
she said. "Look what I can do!" She flexed and
turned her wrists and opened and closed all her fingers, effortlessly. I'm
no orthopedist, but anyone could see that there was nearly complete range of
motion. "Wow!" I
said. "What have you been doing?" She looked at me as
if I asked an odd question. "What we
talked about," she answered. "I've been juicing every day, and
fasting on juices every other week. For the last year and a half! And
look at my complexion!" Cynthia, or whoever
this person really was, had almost no wrinkles. Her skin tone was
perfect, perhaps a bit on the carotene-orange side. USA Today has
described this harmless mega-juicing side effect as looking like "an
artificial sun tan." True. The doctors' Merck Manual
describes hypercarotenosis "harmless."
Also true. I describe it as
"effective." There is more to juicing than just
carotenes. The complex carbohydrates, raw food enzymes, organic minerals
and vitamins, soluble fibers, and other vegetable nutrients makes for the
perfect antidote to the protein-dominated, fat- heavy, sugar-laden
arthritis-causing Standard American Diet.
Once, my own mother
had arthritis. She was just entering her sixties. The symptoms were
not severe, but they were getting worse each year. She started taking
vitamins, juicing, and most notably, eating lentil sprouts. Mom is a unique
person, a "strange bird" as our old hardware-store man used to
say. She will stick to an idea, even an untenable one, for a long
time. This time, her talents for stubbornness were put to good use. Every morning, Mom
would have a large bowlful of sprouted lentils. Lentils look like brown split
peas. To sprout them, she would soak dry lentils overnight in tap
water. The next morning, she'd pour off the soaking water, rinse and
drain them. Later that day, she'd rinse and drain the lentils once
more. They were ready for breakfast the next day. This may already
sound pretty funky, but she went one step further: she topped them with
molasses, and ate them with a spoon. Yum. Now where does an
otherwise intelligent person pick up ideas like this? Guilty. Yes, I
was the culprit. I will stand on the
results, though. It was considerably less than a year and my mom had no trace
of arthritis. And this may be the really good news: she eventually
discontinued the lentil meal, and also the moderate (one glass per day)
juicing she was doing. She still continues to take her vitamins to this
day. I know this lady
and her hands especially well. The raw sprout program worked. Juicing
worked for Cynthia and Mrs. Kelremor. It all
sounds quacky, because it is.
But that's how arthritis was eradicated from three sets of hands.
For more of my take on arthritis: http://www.doctoryourself.com/arthritis_II.html
Andrew Saul is the author of the books FIRE
YOUR DOCTOR! How to be Independently Healthy (reader reviews at http://www.doctoryourself.com/review.html
) and DOCTOR YOURSELF: Natural Healing that Works. (reviewed at http://www.doctoryourself.com/saulbooks.html
)
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AN IMPORTANT NOTE: This page is not in any way offered as prescription, diagnosis nor treatment for any disease, illness, infirmity or physical condition. Any form of self-treatment or alternative health program necessarily must involve an individual's acceptance of some risk, and no one should assume otherwise. Persons needing medical care should obtain it from a physician. Consult your doctor before making any health decision. Neither the author nor the webmaster has authorized the use of their names or the use of any material contained within in connection with the sale, promotion or advertising of any product or apparatus. Single-copy reproduction for individual, non-commercial use is permitted providing no alterations of content are made, and credit is given. |
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