A Natural Treatment for Arthritis
Jonathan Wright, M.D. says:
Say goodbye to most arthritis pain for good
in eight steps or less
In the March 2003 issue of Nutrition & Healing, you read about
different ways to protect your hear -t- a topic not making many
headlines these days, but one that’s still critical to your health. In this
article, I’ve chosen another topic that you’re also not hearing much
about lately (except in drug ads), even though it probably affects
many of you on a daily basis: arthritis.
I’ve seen just how debilitating this condition can be. And al-
though there are plenty of patented prescription and over-the-counter
arthritis medications available, judging from the fact that arthritis is
still one of the primary complaints of patients who visit the Tahoma
Clinic, it’s obvious that those options are only masking symptoms
temporarily. They’re just not designed to correct the underlying prob-
lems that are causing your pain. So let’s take a comprehensive look at
the various natural alternatives that might allow you to throw out
those patent medicines once and for all.
The first thing to determine is which type of arthritis you have.
There are two major forms of arthritis, degenerative arthritis (also
known as osteoarthritis) and rheumatoid arthritis. Osteoarthritis is
the most common form of the disease and occurs when the cartilage
between the joints begins to break down and wear away, causing
pain and stiffness. Rheumatoid arthritis involves inflammation, pain,
and stiffness of the lining of joints in your body and also causes
redness and swelling in most cases. If you aren’t sure which form of
arthritis you have, your doctor can help determine that. Although
both types have very different causes, some of the natural treatments
for each type overlap. But let’s start with osteoarthritis.
The arthritis triggers that could be
growing in your garden
The first thing I recommend for osteoarthritis is changing cer-
tain aspects of your diet. In the 1950s, Norman Childers, Ph.D.,
found that eliminating certain vegetables (known as nightshade veg-
etables)
from the diet could completely eliminate arthritis symptoms in
many cases. Nightshade vegetables include tomatoes, potatoes, pep-
pers (including paprika, but not black pepper), eggplants, and to-
bacco. According to Dr. Childers, nightshade sensitivity isn’t an
allergy but actually a progressive loss of the ability to metabolize
substances known as “solanine alkaloids,” which are found in all
nightshade vegetables. Unfortunately, there’s no test that can tell you
if your arthritis will respond to a nightshade-free diet. It’s strictly a
“try it and see” situation.
It’s harder than it might seem to completely eliminate night-
shades. Tomato and potato make their way into a wide variety of food
products, and pepper gets around a lot too. Check your local library
or contact the Arthritis Nightshades Research Foundation
(www.noarthritis.com) for a copy of Dr. Childers’ book, variously
titled (depending on the edition) Childers’ Diet; Arthritis -- Childers’
Diet to Stop It; and similar titles. The information he includes can be
a big help in searching out all sources of nightshades. But even
eliminating the most common nightshades (the ones listed above) is
definitely worth trying. Eliminate them for at least three to four months
and see if it makes a difference in your symptoms. If you’re not sure
after three or four months, you can do a “nightshade challenge” by
eating lots of tomato, potato, and peppers. If the pain comes back
after the challenge, you’ll know that you are nightshade-sensitive
and you should eliminate those foods from your diet permanently.
[Also The Arthritis Help Centers, Box 768, Wharton, NJ 07885,
published research findings in Foods Found to Cause Pain, Swelling
and Stiffness, which identified a large number of foods many of
which contained nightshades and related used as taste enhancers not
required to be identified on the food label. http://
www.arthritishelpcenters.com. Ed.]
Sometimes, osteoarthritis is aggravated by “regular” food aller-
gies. If you have a personal or family history of allergies, it’s worth
having this possibility checked out. For a list of physicians in your
area who can help you with allergy screening, contact the American
Academy of Environmental Medicine (http://www.aaem.com). There
are various ways to determine specific food allergies, but skin testing
is not usually an accurate tool in this case.
The alternative treatment so effective it’s
becoming mainstream
Once you’ve determined whether or not allergies or sensitivities
play a role in your arthritis, you can move on to other natural thera-
pies, starting with glucosamine. By now, even mainstream medical
doctors have heard of glucosamine. Research shows that it works by
helping to stimulate the growth of new joint cartilage. This is prob-
ably why there’s usually a three to four week delay after starting
treatment for pain relief to begin. I recommend 500 milligrams of
glucosamine sulfate three times a day.
There have been some warnings in mainstream medical publi-
cations that glucosamine might affect blood sugar control. If you
have significant osteoarthritis and don’t have diabetes, this theoreti-
cal possibility shouldn’t be a problem. If you do have diabetes,
checking your blood sugar will tell you whether the glucosamine has
enough of an effect to warrant not taking it. In most cases, the im-
provement you’ll likely feel will far outweigh the possibility of any
slight effect on blood sugar.
Glucosamine is often combined with chondroitin in natural ar-
thritis formulas. But there’s enough question about chondroitin and
risk of prostate cancer for me to advise all men to avoid chondroitin
at this time. Besides, I’ve observed that glucosamine usually works
just as well by itself. So just use “plain” glucosamine until this
question is settled for good.
Complete arthritis relief in
less than one month
The next natural osteoarthritis remedy on the list is niacinamide.
Even many natural medicine doctors have forgotten, or never learned,
just how useful niacinamide (not niacin) can be for controlling the
pain and swelling of osteoarthritis.
In 1949, William Kaufman, M.D., Ph.D., published his excep-
tionally careful and comprehensive research about niacinamide and
osteoarthritis titled The Common Form of Joint Dysfunction: Its
Incidence and Treatment. Unfortunately, Dr. Kaufman’s research
came out around the same time that patented cortisone formulas were
being heavily promoted, so niacinamide treatment was hardly no-
ticed. But even though it never made much of a stir, niacinamide
treatment works very well. I recommend using 1,000 milligrams of
niacinamide three times a day (it doesn’t work as well if you only
take it once or twice daily). You’ll probably start feeling results in
three to four weeks. Many osteoarthritis sufferers achieve complete
relief of pain and swelling as long as they continue on with niacina-
mide.
Niacinamide doesn’t appear to re-grow cartilage, so it’s best to
use glucosamine along with it. If you have diabetes and are con-
cerned about glucosamine’s effects on blood sugar, niacinamide is a
good companion for it. Niacinamide also has many benefits for blood
sugar problems, and using it with glucosamine is even more likely to
relieve your osteoarthritis symptoms.
And a caution: on rare occasion, people who take this amount of
niacinamide get low-grade nausea, queasiness, and sometimes vom-
iting. Although this only happens in less than 1 percent of people
who take niacinamide, if you experience any of these problems, stop
