Arthritis and Joint Pain

Learn how to live without this debilitating disease

People in non-western cultures who eat diets low in animal fat and protein have much lower incidences of all types of arthritis!
While most arthritis sufferers are being told that they will need to “learn to live with it,” Drs. Goldhamer and Marano of the TrueNorth Health Center in Penngrove, California, are helping patients learn to live without it.
Arthritis is a general term which means inflammation of one of the joints in the body. We have all experienced inflammation at one time or another. The most common cause of inflammation is injury. Suppose you lose your footing and fall. During the fall you injure your ankle by twisting it. As a result, your ankle becomes inflamed. The injured area becomes red and hot, it swells up, and you experience pain. Fortunately, the symptoms associated with acute inflammation are part of the healing process. The increased blood flow to the area brings with it extra white blood cells, results in swelling and pain, and limits mobility, which prevents further damage. This process allows your body to heal itself quickly.
Because there are many different causes of inflammation, there are many different kinds of arthritis. The initial inflammation resulting from trauma or other injury, such as the one described above, is not the big problem. Continuous inflammation- the kind that goes on for years- is what leads to the very debilitating problems of arthritis, and it can result in permanently dysfunctional and deformed joints.

Is there hope for relief

People who suffer from arthritis usually seek some form of treatment to solve their problem. Unfortunately, arthritis of all types has a very poor prognosis under medical treatment. There is no cure for any of the types of arthritis, and medical treatment consists mainly of attempting to relieve pain.

Beneficial exercise

Mild exercise that moves the joint, but does not aggravate it, can be very beneficial. Exercise prevents muscle atrophy around the affected joints. Muscles protect the joints, which is why it is so important to maintain the muscle strength around an arthritic joint. Exercise also helps circulate fluids in the joint capsule. There aren’t any direct blood vessels that go right to the joint surfaces, so oxygen and nutrients cannot get directly to the cartilage coating around the joints. Nutrients have to diffuse from the nearest blood vessels into the fluid that is in each joint. Exercise assures that there is plenty of motion of the fluid around the joints, so that the nutrients and the oxygen can get delivered. This allows the joints to repair themselves and prevents further degeneration.

Dietary factors

At the TrueNorth Health Center, we see many people experience a decrease in their Osteoarthritis after changing their diets. The dietary changes do not reverse the joint deformities, which remain unchanged. But the pain still diminishes, because the improved diet helps reduce the inflammation in the joints.

Eating animal products

Rheumatoid arthritis is rare in societies where animal products are seldom eaten, such as in Africa, Japan, and China. And when rheumatoid arthritis does develop, it is usually much milder and is associated with much less disability than in the United States. There are several theories as to why diet influences these antibody/antigen complex diseases, and the culprits are again protein and fat.
Any foreign protein that comes into the body is called an antigen. Our immune system manufactures antibodies to fight these invading substances, and antibody/antigen complexes are formed.

Diet change alleviates pain

One study that supports the contention that diet plays a role in the evolution of arthritis was undertaken at Wayne State University Medical School. The results were dramatic. Investigators took six rheumatoid arthritis patients and fed them a totally fat-free diet for seven weeks. During that time all six patients experienced a complete remission from the pain. The symptoms recurred within 72 hours when either vegetable oil or animal fat was introduced to their diets. If they ate chicken, beef, cheese, coconut oil, or safflower oil, they experienced severe arthritic pain within 72 hours.

Fasting in recovery

People’s reactions to the various antigens can be very different. Dairy products, eggs, beef, wheat, and corn are the most common culprits, but there are many others, some of them quite obscure.

Experience of success

At the True North Health Center, we have found that the most effective approach to arthritis involves an appropriate period of supervised fasting, followed by a health-promoting diet, appropriate exercise, adequate rest and sleep, good body mechanics and posture, and, when appropriate, chiropractic manipulation and physical therapy. Arthritis is something our patients are learning to live without.