DAY 173 – Arthritis Sufferers May Now be Able to Diagnose Themselves

Researchers in Ojai, California, using a very small study sample, have confirmed what has long been suspected; weekend gardening can be diagnostic for arthritis.

Volunteer subjects, with a mean age of 53, worked in their organic vegetable gardens for 5 hours on a Saturday, and 5 hours on the next day, Sunday. The majority subsequently reported awaking Monday morning to find themselves stiff and sore in the muscles and joints of the back and neck; classic signs of arthritis.

Lead investigator, Dr. Kristofer Young, founder of the little-known spinal research center, Ventura Chiropractic & Massage, stated that he had been certain that his study would prove, once and for all, that gardening is an inexpensive and accurate tool for diagnosing arthritis.

Dr. Young stated that what baffles him is that most modern medical practitioners advise patients that there is little that can be done about arthritis other than to mask the pain with drugs. He went on to say that given that medical science has proven that other chronic degenerative diseases including cardiovascular disease and diabetes can be reversed, it is remarkable that most MDs still leave patients with the unfounded belief that arthritis is untreatable.

Having suffered from severe degenerative spinal arthritis himself, the symptoms beginning at age ten, Dr. Young reports that at age 59, following lifestyle changes, including diet and exercise, he is now able to do more work in his own organic vegetable garden in Ojai, California, than he could at age 40. He states that while the MRIs of his low back, taken in 1991 and 1998, clearly show the destruction of bone and disc, he currently has less pain and greater function.

Dr. Young’s team is looking into funding for further research to ask the question; what will it take for America to wake up to the idea that the Standard American Diet (SAD) is the greatest single cause of arthritis?

DAY 81 - Arthritis Causes Knuckle Cracking

That’s right - or at the very least plausible - that you’ve had it backwards all these years. Arthritis causes knuckle cracking, not the other way around.

There is no medical evidence that knuckle cracking causes arthritis; not one study.

If a young person had mild discomfort or stiffness in his hands, would he crack his knuckles to make them feel better? Yes, he would; and he does.

In my chiropractic practice, I find that young people who crack their knuckles, have early, mild arthritis. These same young people also usually have signs, obvious to a trained physician, of arthritis in their necks and other parts of their spines.

There is nothing inherently wrong with knuckle cracking. It simply must be recognized as a probable early warning sign of arthritis, and we need to get our story straight!

Note: Arthritis is, in most all cases, treatable, and in many cases “curable”.

DAY 48 - Got Knee Pain? Part II

Most chronic knee pain is a result of a combination of factors. Common factors include, 1) food allergies and food sensitivities that result in inflammation in the joint, or in a reaction in which the body attacks the joint, 2) chronic illness in the digestive tract that may have no other symptoms than joint pain, 3) loss of mobility in the low back which may negatively impact gait, or may alter nerve conduction from the spinal nerves of the low back which control leg muscles that stabilize the knee, 4) insufficient stretching exercise to maintain a full range of motion in the lower extremities, which results in restricted motion, altered gait, and poor nutrient delivery to the joints, and 5) insufficient walking which results in weak supporting muscles and poor nutrient delivery to the joint.

Treatment for chronic knee pain can be divided into two types; cover-up and functional.

Cover-up treatments include medications to mask pain and block inflammation, and limitation of use. These treatments may be appropriate for short-term use, but are disastrous when used long-term. Masking body-protecting pain signals leaves an individual at risk of causing further damage to the involved body part. Anti-inflammatory drugs are known to damage joint structures, injure the lining of the intestinal tract, and cause 10,000 deaths a year in the US. Limiting knee use means walking less. While some limitation of use may be important, we all know, when you don’t use it, you lose it.

Functional treatment begins with assessment of factors that influence the knee specifically, and the body generally, and then focuses on creating changes that would enable the knee (and the body) to heal itself. (It is worth noting that the body is designed to repair itself.)

Functional self-care is most important. Examples are listed below. Keep in mind that chronic health problems are usually caused by multiple factors, and therefore often require several simultaneously combined therapies and lifestyle changes in order to relieve pain and restore function.

In my experience, elimination of foods that commonly cause arthritis provides the greatest relief from knee pain. Some of the foods that commonly cause joint pain are: dairy products, sugars, tomatoes, chiles, corn, meats, and shellfish.

Full-body stretching, such as yoga, with attention to the legs and low back, is remarkable for its ability to improve knee function and reduce pain. Stretching should be done for 30 or more minutes one to two times per day.

Baths with epsom salts are often very effective in the treatment of a wide variety of musculoskeletal conditions, including knee pain. I recommend using an entire half-gallon of salts in a warm to hot bath. These magnesium salts can be purchased at drug stores and large grocery stores. They have been used with amazing results for generations.

Essential fatty acids (fish oil and flax oil) taken as nutritional supplements can, in many cases, reduce inflammation and knee pain. Recall that fish oil has been used for generations in the treatment of arthritis. When supplementing with these fats, it is important to also take a fat-soluble antioxidant such as vitamin E to protect these oils from oxidizing (turning rancid) in the body.

Aerobic exercise has proven extremely effective at reducing joint pain. Effects appear to be mediated in part through improvements in circulation, detoxification, and elimination of wastes. In more general terms, balance and wellness in the body is improved by an optimization of turnover/cycling of bodily fluids and gases, and their physiologically active compounds. This occurs with regular exercise.

Significant emotional stress must always be considered as a potential cause of pain, and if present, must be dealt with.

-- coming up ... Parts III, IV and V

DAY 47 – Got Knee Pain? - Part I

Are you taking fish oil supplements? Have you had your low back adjusted by your chiropractor? Are you doing yoga?

If it is important to you to save your knees, and maintain your ability to walk, read on and learn what most people don’t know about getting rid of knee pain. (Knee replacements will be covered later.)

Knee pain, as with most conditions, is divided into two classifications, acute and chronic, which are based on how long ago the pain began, how it began, and its intensity.  Chronic conditions are those that continue or recur over an extended period, often come on gradually, or may be the result of an incompletely healed injury. Acute conditions are those that begin or worsen suddenly, and are often caused by injury, infection, allergy, or abrupt change in a chronic degenerative process like arthritis. This article is primarily about chronic and acute non-injury induced knee pain.

First, let’s deal with the arthritis confusion, recognizing that knee pain invariably includes, or is, an arthritic condition. During my practice career (began 1983), I have interviewed and treated many patients suffering with chronic knee pain. I routinely ask patients what they believe to be the cause of their pain. Overwhelmingly, their response has been “arthritis.” At that point, I ask if the patient knows what arthritis is. Most know nothing. They erroneously believe that “it just happens”, that it is inevitable following injury to a joint, or that it is a result of aging. Even young people with chronic knee pain will answer that getting old causes arthritis. For some of these patients, my questions create a beginning for consideration of their condition relative to its causes and to the approaches that can be used to restore the health of their knees.

-to be continued tomorrow-

DAY 36 – Living with Arthritis - Why???

I was ten years old when I awoke one morning unable to move. I was on my back and could not turn, or attempt to get up without a sharp pain piercing my low back. Lying there, I fearfully wondered what kind of shape I would be in at 50, given that I was in such pain at 10. Finally I called out to my parents; and my Dad came to gently lift me out of bed.

That was the first of many painful, and at times incapacitating, episodes of arthritis that I would experience during the next 3 decades. Thirty-one years after that fateful morning an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) showed that the arthritis had destroyed bone and discs in my low back.

(the image to the left is a second MRI of my low back taken in 1998)

Today, November 10, 2010, forty-nine years after that fateful morning, I get an e-mail from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, titled “Living with Arthritis”. Not exactly timely for me. :) But timing is not the problem with this e-mail and the linked article from the National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases (NIAMS) of the Department of Health and Human Services’ National Institutes of Health (NIH). http://www.niams.nih.gov/Health_Info/Arthritis/default.asp  The problem is that from the highest healthcare resource in the land we learn almost nothing about the causes of arthritis, and scantily more about what to do about it.

The article informs us that inflammation causes arthritis, but then neglects to tell us what causes inflammation. This is a serious omission. Fortunately, some of us already know.

As for what to do about our arthritis, we are advised to stay active, lose weight, absolutely see a doctor (implies an MD), and by all means take the anti-inflammatory (NSAID) medication that your MD will surely prescribe. Again, no discussion or connection to the cause of the disease.

This article shines a flood light on America’s need for real healthcare reform. We must break from our addiction to the conventional medicine of suppressing symptoms with drugs, and embrace conversations and practices that deal with understanding the causes of illness and disease.

My advice is don’t waste your time learning to “Live with Arthritis”. Instead, learn about its most common causes, and make changes in your lifestyle to respond to those causes.

Dr. Young
Note: I will address causes and functional treatments for arthritis in a future post.

DAY 26 – New Day…Old Story about Drugs Without Conversation

First, let me give you a little background.  I practice a combination of Chiropractic and Functional Medicine. Chiropractic has historically been a practice of “natural” healing, with a strong interest in treating the causes of disease, rather than the symptoms. Functional medicine is personalized medicine that deals with primary prevention and underlying causes, instead of symptoms, in the treatment of serious chronic disease.
(photo - Doctors Mac by owensoft)

The dominant mode of handling patients today in the US is to name their conditions (diagnosis) and then treat the conditions with drugs to stop the symptoms. It is uncommon for causes to be discussed with patients; and patients usually don’t ask.

It doesn’t take a genius to know that covering symptoms with drugs, and not addressing the lifestyle causes of ill health, are a recipe for disaster.

So, let me share with you a simple story from the office that carries, as the kids say, a “ginormous” lesson.

A 58 year-old returning patient reports that thanks to my encouragement, she had gotten her vitamin D level tested by her MD and learned that the level was still low. The MD had also run a single test for thyroid disease, which also showed a problem, and for which he had written a prescription. When I inquired, the patient shared that her neck pain from some months back had improved and that she was taking 1,200 mg per day of oxaprozin that her MD had prescribed to be used for 3 months.

And here is the rest of the story, and the short list of the dangers for the patient;
1)    while the patient’s test results showed low vitamin D, she received no counseling on her associated risk for cancers (including breast and colon), heart attack, stroke, diabetes, autoimmune disease, etc…, and she received no direction regarding how much vitamin D to take and when to retest,
2)    while the thyroid test has undoubtedly found a problem, no further testing was ordered to determine the type and cause of the hypothyroid condition,
3)    thyroid hormone replacement was prescribed with no discussion of the cause of the condition,
4)    given that 90% of hypothyroid conditions are caused by autoimmunity (the body attacking itself) it would have been wise to discuss why the body is attacking itself,
5)    additionally, the patient was not informed that of patients with autoimmune thyroid disease, 50-80% of them also have an autoimmune reaction destroying one or more other tissues of their bodies, such as joints-arthritis, pancreas-diabetes, etc….,
6)    the fact that low vitamin D is associated with autoimmune diseases was not mentioned,
7)    the patient was put on a drug for neck pain without discussion of the cause of her chronic degenerative arthritis; and no long-term functional care program was discussed,
8)    the patient was not advised that the drug, oxaprozin, an NSAID, is known to cause damage to the lining of the digestive tract in some individuals, thereby breaking down the barrier between the gut and the immune system, leading to increased inflammation, and potentially additional damage to the joints in this patient’s neck, remembering that pain in the neck is what the drug was being taken for to begin with,
9)    there was no conversation about the interesting probability that both the arthritis in the neck and the thyroid disease are  both autoimmune based, and that low vitamin D may be a factor in their progression.

All of us, doctors and patients, would be wise to think more and talk more about what causes our illness. We would not just be wiser to do so; we would be safer, and we would be setting a more functional example for our children.

Dr. Young