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Extreme Healing - Arthritis - Diet

Created on: 2025-05-26

Modified on: 2025-06-08

I've written previously about extreme healing, of heart failure. Let's look at another condition: arthritis.

In the USA, arthritis counts for 5-6,000 deaths per year, and additionally causes an enormous amount of disability and poor quality of life. What does orthodox medicine have to offer? Not a great deal. There are pain-relievers, like paracetamol (aka tylenol / acetaminophen). This "innocent" over-the-counter drug is far more dangerous than most people realise. In the USA, it's responsible for 56,000 emergency department visits, 2,600 hospitalisations, and 500 deaths annually. In the UK, it's responsible for 200-300 deaths per year.

But when paracetamol no longer gives adequate relief from arthritis, people move on to non-steroidal-anti-inflammatories - NSAIDs. These carry further risks - primarily gastro-intestinal bleeds. At a conservative estimate, these lead to 3,200 deaths in the USA annually, and 700-900 in the UK. Needless to say, they don't cure the arthritis.

But these deaths are not attributed to arthritis. When the harms caused by drugs used to manage arthritis are taken into account, the true number of deaths in consequence of arthritis would be much higher. Further, arthritis itself is a side effect of many drugs.

What about natural healing alternatives? In the realm of herbal medicine, many people look immediately to cannabis or other herbal pain-relievers. I don't want to get into the whole debate about drug legalisation, all I will say is that from a therapeutic point of view, pain-relief alone could massively improve someone's quality of life - but from what I've read, that's all it does for this condition, which is a modest gain in comparison to what can be achieved.

We've been conditioned to have low expectations, but here's one of numerous case studies which show what is possible. This is from a great natural healer of the last century, Dr Raymond Christopher:

On one of his famed house calls in Washington, he entered the home of a man stooped with the pain of arthritis. Shifting slightly in his wheelchair and speaking through the grimace of excruciating pain, he turned to Ray and said, "Please, please help me. No one has been able to help me yet. I have tried every doctor available, but nothing worked." . . .

[Dr Christopher provided herbs and instruction.]

Within weeks, the man's joints began to loosen and for the first time in years, he was able to stand. As the healing continued, he was able first to walk, then to run. Eventually he was completely healed, a stranger to the wheelchair that had held him prisoner for so many years. Only a few months after he first saw Dr Christopher he was back on the job as a night watchman, walking his rounds with difficulty.

. . . Dr Christopher found that people stricken with an "incurable" condition were often the ones most willing to try natural herbal remedies. Many seemed to have the pervading attitude of "I've tried everything else . . . I guess herbs won't do any harm."

Dr Christopher had achieved this and similar cures with diet, herbs, and poultices - old fashioned remedies, but who cares that they're old fashioned, if they work?

The most effective course of treatment for a patient depends on the kind of arthritis from which they suffer.

For example, I've noted among my friends a preponderance of early arthritis among vegans I've known. In the most extreme case, a vegan friend had mobility difficulties for years - he could walk, but with an obvious struggle, and for some time he relied on a cane. For a time he went on a paleo diet and reported feeling better, but he didn't stick with it, due to its expense, and went back to being vegan. That said, from what I've learned since, the paleo diet was not likely enough at that stage in any case. He ended up getting a double hip replacement at the age of about thirty.

The operation was a success, but he consciously limited his activity to make his artificial joints last as long as possible. The dietary solution is not as simple as choosing between omnivore or vegan, there is of course more to it, but I do believe my friend's diet had been a significant factor in his condition, and that with the application of natural healing, his operation could have been avoided.

Other forms of arthritis are caused by excessive meat. Indeed, Dr Christopher himself was highly sensitive to red meat.

At times, relief may be all that can be afforded to a patient - but orthodox medicine starts with this as an assumed limitation. Natural healing, on the other hand, aims to remove the causes of any condition, and to restore as much of a person's health as possible.

This is essentially the difference between the goals of pharmaceutical based medicine and natural healing as a whole, whether it's arthritis, neurological issues like dementia, blood sugar disorders, digestive disorders, or anything else.

- Antony

Notes

: Agrawal, et al., Acetaminophen Toxicity, NLM, last update: 25th Apr 2025

: Number of deaths from drug poisoning by paracetamol in England and Wales from 1993 to 2023, Statista

: Do NSAIDs cause more deaths than opioids?, Med. Central, 5th Mar 2019

: Hawkey, et al., Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: overall risks and management. Complementary roles for COX-2 inhibitors and proton pump inhibitors, Gut, Apr 2003

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