Is there a cure for arthritis?

Talk of medical cures is about as rare as hens’ molars since medicine is not about cures it is about treating symptoms i.e. money. Our money. Money big pharma wants in their pockets. But is there a simple cure for arthritis and gout? Let me outline an experiment I have just concluded. I admit it is extremely limited in scope but it does serve as an indicator of what might be possible.

I have long believed arthritis is a disease brought about by low vitamin D3 levels. But I doubted this was the only component. The more I examined this the more I became convinced the body Ph level also plays a part. Cancer thrives in a negative Ph environment, the body, but not in a neutral or positive Ph environment. This fact was established way back in the 1950s. (So why are cancer patients not told this? Well, read the first paragraph.)

My test consisted of regulating the Ph level of my body by the very simple means of bicarbonate of soda and eating raw, fresh vegetables. This I did for a few days before drinking, over the course of one day, several beers and half a bottle of white wine and I ate fruit high in sugar and had two sandwiches. I deliberately created a toxic environment in my body. During the day I had a level teaspoon of bicarb in a tall glass of water and one before bed. I was expecting pain and suffering through the night and certainly a whopper of a gouty toe the following morning but I was in for a surprise. I did suffer very mild pain in toes of both feet during the night but come morning, nothing. No throbbing red toe. No pain, full flexibility of all my toes. Nothing bad. Read that bit again. Nothing bad. Nothing.

Now, I accept this is only one simple experiment but it does seem to point in a direction that I feel is worthy of further study. Maybe it is as simple as regulating Ph and ensuring vitamin D3 levels are sufficiently high. Why couldn’t it be that simple? And if arthritis can be cured hundreds of millions of people all round the world will be able to get out of their pain trap. If you are an arthritis sufferer can you imagine day after day without pain? How would that affect your life?

As an aside, I have been an habitual green tea drinker. I make it at night, let it cool and drink tall glasses of it with a bit of lemon out of the fridge in hot weather. Here’s the surprise: it exacerbated my arthritis! I am now trying hibiscus tea with red onion skins. So far, no bad reactions and it’s very refreshing.

If you try what I have outlined in this post let me know your experience. Every bit of information is another brick in the wall of human knowledge.

Fast ‘n Loose

I have been playing fast and loose with my supplements regime to see if they do make a difference. I’ve been on this experiment for four weeks now and I have a conclusion. They do indeed make a difference but my body, clearly, no longer relies on them. There has been a change and it’s for the better.

I have cannabis oil and 1000mgs of fish oil in the late morning with a light snack. NOT gut damaging muesli! In the afternoon CoQ10, Vitamin B complex, 8000IUs of vitamin D plus vitamin K. Cutting back from 12000 IUs of vitamin D to my original 8000IUs has removed some odd little tweaks I was getting at night.

I continue the exercises and indeed some mornings my legs feel almost new. A strange sensation and I certainly don’t fear a walk any more, as I did a few years back. Now I prefer to park my car at a distance from my destination, maybe two hundred metres or so, and walk the rest at a brisk, easy-stride pace. This, too, is a trick – learning how to walk properly. Almost nobody does. Look at the Maasai when they walk: long, even strides almost as if they are gliding. That’s how it’s done. Just copy them. I walk all over my local town and can easily clock up two kilometres without a single twinge of pain and I can walk about in the country over very uneven ground with the same ease.

Fear, I am convinced, is the precursor of our pain. We are programmed to feel pain at the very mention of arthritis. The number of adverts for pain killers, gels, special bandages has conditioned us, i.e. brainwashed us, into believing we need these useless products. Worse, we need knee surgery! I accept many people have let things get too far, are too far brainwashed and their only salvation is surgery but for new sufferers your main option is you. You have to do the work to beat your disease. You. I firmly believe this disease is reversible i.e. it can be cured – without drugs.

If you remove the fear of pain and do the exercises, which help build cartilage and muscle, you will be much better off. Lack of exercise because of that fear of pain is actually making your situation much worse. Do the heat exercises in bed before getting up and then think no more about it. Do NOT think, Oh I have arthritis, I’ll be in pain just by standing up. Think nothing of it at all. It works for me.

When your fear of immobility is greater than your fear of pain, you’ll start to get it right.

Arthritis – slip ‘n slide

Well, it’s been an interesting couple of weeks. The increase to 12000IUs of Vitamin D3 has certainly had a beneficial effect. However, there are now a few strange niggling pains at night that I never had before. I suspect these are the result of me being much more active. I really do just get about these days. I will let this test run for two more weeks then revert to 8000IUs to see what happens. But this is my body. Yours may react differently. As I constantly say, no two bodies are alike. We each need our own level of… whatever. And of course the big question is, is Vitamin D3 a cure or a treatment for the symptoms? And if it’s a cure or a component of a cure how long does it take to make us arthritis free?

Could a cure for arthritis be that simple? Vitamin D3 and a proper diet? At this point, we have no idea because there have been no appropriate studies. The findings of Dr Colin H. Dong, Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne and Dr Steven R. Gundry deserve serious scientific study but… there’s no money in natural cures. So, we must do the work for ourselves.

Now, what does non-stick cookware have to do with arthritis? We don’t know. What we do know for sure is that diet is a major factor in the on-set and continuance of arthritis. And so is stress. These two primary areas deserve our full attention. Thousands of years ago people were suffering from arthritis so it’s not a huge leap to imagine there has to be a common factor or factors with today and the only reasonable factor is nutrition – or lack of it. We have had the health giving benefits of Vitamin D since day one, courtesy of our sun but the planet has seen its fair share of ups and downs. Yes there have been many and some fairly dramatic climate changes before humans ever walked the earth, and maybe arthritis boomed in the dark years. We simply don’t know because no one, as far as I know, has done any research. No money in it.

What doctors do not seem to understand, at least none that I have spoken with, is that dark skinned (tanned) and older people cannot absorb Vitamin D efficiently, which is why we oldies need supplements. (It is predominantly a white man’s disease.) If you have a healthy tan and getting on a bit, lying all day in the sun with your Kindle or reading the sports pages is not going to help. Is that another common factor? Is that why most people still think we get arthritis because it’s an age related thing? Well, I suppose in a sense it is but the underlying cause could simply be lack of Vitamin D3, which could well have affected people thousands of years ago. And I’m sure, given the conditions and survival conditions, the nasty boy stress was forever present. Has anyone researched that?

So where does non-stick cookware figure in all this? Non-stick pots and pans are covered in a substance called polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), a man-made chemical accidentally invented in 1938 while Roy Plunkett was attempting to create a new refrigerant. It went on to be used in the making of the first atomic bomb. Teflon is the brand name most commonly associated with it but there are many others including Dupont and T-Fal. There have been recent studies showing that the safety of using Teflon is – at best – tenuous.

The bogey man is a substance called PFOA, (perfluorooctanoic acid) which is one of the thousands of chemicals that fall into the category of PFAS—per and polyfluoroalkyl substances. They’re called “forever chemicals” because many persist for months or even years in our bodies and they break down very slowly, if ever, in the environment. PFOA, which has been studied more than most other related chemicals, raises particular concerns because it has been clearly linked to human health risks. It was used in the production of Teflon up until 2013 – theoretically. However, independent test have shown the substance can still be found in non-stick cookware today – despite industry claims to the contrary.

PFOA has been linked to a number of health conditions, including thyroid disorders, chronic kidney disease, liver disease, and testicular cancer. It has also been linked to infertility and low birth weight. What’s more, it was found in the blood of more than 98% of people who took part in the U.S. 1999–2000 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) It is also found in polar bears, human sperm and at ocean depths of 3,000 feet. So, it’s in the oceans. Meaning someone put it there. It did not walk to the sea and heave itself in.

All the medical problems linked to Teflon can be found at the root of many stress clusters and I know stress is a component in arthritis. When we are stressed what happens? Our chemical soup is badly interrupted and that affects hormone levels including Cortisol. When we suffer an overload of Cortisol, because the body is trying to help us, we get Cortisol rejection, which means we suffer pain! It’s all linked. The body is a complex, self-healing mechanism that pharmaceutical companies are constantly trying to convince us needs an ever-increasing supply of their drugs to keep functioning. It doesn’t… but you might prefer to believe the adverts. It’s easier.

I NEVER use non-stick cookware or utensils. Many years ago I read of the dangers. Much of that information has now disappeared and we could take a guess as to why. Cookware sales amounted to $2.7 billion in 2021, and more than half of that — $1.8 billion — was nonstick cookware, according to The NPD Group. That old destructor, the social cancer known as corporate money, is yet again dancing with the devil.

The major producers of these cookware items are spending a lot of money on glitzy advertising to convince us it’s all perfectly safe. Their bought-and-paid-for scientists say so. Same sort of bought-and-paid-for scientists who told women Thalidomide was perfectly safe…? However, of itself it might not be a cause but combined with poor nutrition it might be. No one has studied it so we don’t know. My motto? When in doubt, leave it out.

As you venture down the road of seeking your solution to your arthritis and your pain, record your good days and bad days. A simple technique that might help you identify the pain-causing patterns. Inappropriate cookware might be one of them. As the old adage goes, the devil is in the details. Pay attention to those details.

Arthritis Pain – update

I upped my intake of Vitamin D3 a week ago as a counter to insulin resistance but it’s too soon to give a definitive report on that. However, there are indications that it is having an effect. I will report on this after a three week period, which should be enough time to give a decent evaluation.

Today it might be useful to give you some source material to help you judge for yourself what does and does not work but that means you have to take the time to read. Something people keep telling me they don’t have time to do. Utter nonsense! Time is already made all you have to do is allot some of it to enhance your life. How difficult is that?

There have been many books written on the subject of arthritis and much untried nonsense expounded so let me tell you of three books that are worth reading:

1. New Hope for the Arthritic by Dr Collin H. Dong and Jane Banks. Published 1976 Grafton Books. This was the first book I bought on the subject back in the 1980s when it was clear to me I was developing a problem for which my doctor had but two useless solutions: paracetamol (something I would never put in my mouth) and a painful cortisol injection. For the past 50 years this medical ignorance has continued
2. Food is Better Medicine than Drugs by Patrick Holford & Jerome Burne. Published 2006 Piatkus Books. This was a book recommended to me by my daughter-in-law and it was a revelation. It presented clear evidence of what I had been thinking and exploring since early 1980 i.e. drugs don’t do it.
3. The Plant Paradox by Dr Steven R. Gundry. Published 2017 Harper Collins. A no-nonsense approach to the primary role food plays in our overall health – complete with recipes.

All three of these books come to the same conclusion: the definition of arthritis as an autoimmune disease is incorrect. The medical profession is wallowing in its collective ignorance because, I suspect, for doctors to start to learn about nutrition takes them away from the very lucrative world of the all-dominant pharmaceutical industry and their particular drug: money. The connection between modern medicine and money CANNOT be over-emphasised.

Back in the early 1970s Dr Dong wrote about a United States Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs whose conclusion was, “We are a nation of nutritional illiterates. A large part of the population takes its opinion about nutrition from advertising, much of that being misinformation, appealing to the eye and taste rather than to a sense of nutritional value. Many of our serious diseases can be attributed to this dietary ignorance.”

What was the American government’s response to this? To sanction, and support with tax payers’ money, companies like Monsanto (now Bayer) to produce poison! For profit. For their personal and shareholders’ financial benefit and not for your health. Money, the most deadly device ever invented.

In the January 1970 issue of the Medical Tribune, Dr Jean Mayer stated, “Our studies at Harvard among residents suggest that the average physician knows a little more about nutrition than the average secretary – unless the secretary has a weight problem. Then she probably knows more than the average physician.”

Dr Alfred D. Klinger, Professor of Preventative Medicine at Rush Medical College, Chicago wrote in the August 1974 issue of the Medical Times, “… there is little or no teaching of and even less interest in nutrition, and little teaching of it in most medical and health professional schools.”

Fifty years on, how ignorant is the medical profession about nutrition today? In complete darkness! A friend who has a whole variety of problems including kidney and liver problems is fed wheat and sugar based products for breakfast and processed ham for lunch, which contains highly toxic nitrates. Which organs eliminate the toxins from our bodies? The kidneys and liver! This in a French hospital, which, in this respect, is no different to UK or Spanish hospitals.

In their excellent book, Food is Better Medicine than Drugs, the writers hit the failure of modern medicine squarely on the head. “So many of us view doctors as a kind of one-stop pill dispensary that we rarely consider how limited this way of thinking is. To begin with, the drugs almost never do anything about the underlying cause.They’re designed to treat symptoms – raised blood pressure, the pain in your joints. And in the end they don’t do the job.” It would be easy to take the view, not necessarily incorrect, that today’s doctors are glorified drugs pushers.

In their book they look at the evidence and state, “… we look at the evidence, often hidden away in medical journals, suggesting that bestselling drugs for chronic diseases – such as anti-inflammatories for joint pain, cholesterol-lowering drugs and anti-depressants – may not be as safe and effective as we are led to believe.”

It doesn’t get much clearer than that.

In his book, The Plant Paradox, Dr Steven Gundry, wrote, “Suppose that in the next few page I told you everything you thought you knew about your diet, your health and your weight is wrong. For decades I believed the lies as well. I was eating a “healthy” diet (after all I’m a heart surgeon.)…Despite the fact that I was hauling around excess weight, high-cholesterol and insulin resistance, I continued to believe that I was doing everything right.”

He added,”…Once you start experiencing the effects of this new approach to eating and living – my patients start to feel better and lose weight within days – you’ll understand the remarkable changes that occur when you feed your body (and your microbiome) foods on which it thrives.”

So there you have it. What ails you, arthritis, can be cured by sorting out your diet. Your choice. Too difficult? Prefer to believe the adverts? The Big Pharma propaganda supported by your government? Go ahead… continue in pain. Your choice.

My next post will be about the role stress plays in your pain. It is a far bigger component that you can imagine, in part fuelled by non-stick cookware and plastic cooking utensils. But that’s next time. For now, I wish you a wonderful and pain-free life.

Massage

Arthritis treatment – massage

The first three treatments by a sports massage therapist made an immediate difference. I no longer felt like a slave to my disease. I could see an alternative. It was very uplifting!

Session four brought a slight regression, pains here and there and a mental feeling of general negativity. From my work as a stress therapist I knew this was perfectly normal and did my best to find a positive in everything, which is a good remedy.

Session five brought more relief and session six was the breakthrough. For the first time in years I had absolutely no pain anywhere in my body. None. You have no idea how incredible that felt. Unless you have lived with daily, grinding pain you cannot know the joy of that situation.

Sessions seven and eight continued to improve my overall well-being, my bodily strength and my outlook.

Session nine was another breakthrough. Parts of my body that had been dormant, without sensation, were brought back to life. It is hard to describe the feeling of having your body brought back to a sense of touch, of life. I felt like my body was twenty years younger.

I am told I look very young, well relatively! I am 75. I feel no older than mid 50s. My bearing, posture and ability to walk have improved beyond anything I could ever have hoped for.

As the sessions continued more areas of my body were revitalised and I feel, once again, normal and not crippled.

My massage continues on a weekly basis in conjunction with all the other things I have tried and listed on Arthritis – practical help. It is normal that my body will get tired, eventually, but I have been given a new lease of life and as I watch my friends age into infirmity and pain, cabinets stuffed with drugs, doctors’ and hospital appointments taking over their days and their conversation I wonder why they accept that as their fate. It needn’t be.

Fermented Vegetables

This is an easy to make super food that works wonders on helping your good gut flora, essential for good health. This recipe uses beetroot but you can use a range of fresh vegetables to suit your taste. It is enough for a large jar of about 1.2l.

5 medium beetroots, peeled and sliced

Half a large celeriac, peeled and sliced

Quarter of medium white cabbage, shredded

6 garlic cloves, peeled and roughly crushed

Piece of fresh ginger, a good inch, peeled and cut into slices

4 stalks of celery finely sliced

Enough lukewarm boiled or filtered water to cover the vegetables

Place all the ingredients in a bowl and mix them up by hand. Fill a large jar to just under half way with water. Put the vegetables in the jar and push them down to get the air out of the spaces between them. Don’t push too hard or you’ll crush the beetroot. Add enough water to cover vegetables and fit a cabbage leaf over the top under the water. There should be about an inch to an inch and a half of headroom in the jar. If the vegetables float to the top and remain exposed to air, they are likely to develop mould, which is why you put the cabbage leaf on top. Some people put a weight on the cabbage leaf such as a small stone.

Place your jar in a deep plate or bowl and put the lid on but leave it loose and open it gently twice a day for the first few days to let the gases out. I leave my jar on the side in the kitchen so I can keep an eye on the fermentation. Usually, around day three, there is quite a vigorous fermentation so be careful when you open the lid. The vegetables may have risen to the top so just let the gas out and push them down, keeping the cabbage leaf on top. Put back any liquid that has come out. Some people cover with piece of paper kitchen towel or cheesecloth and secure with elastic band but I have always put the lid on, leaving it open just enough for the gases to escape. After 5-7 days they are ready to eat.

Once opened store it in a fridge with the lid on. Eat half a cup 3 times a week and drink the juice. If you have had bad stomach problems start with just the juice for 2 days then eat the vegetables every day for 10 days. When you start, do it at the weekend because you may find yourself in the toilet more often than normal!

You can use a variety of good vegetables like red onion, red cabbage, carrots, broccoli, etc. I do a red onion and red cabbage mix with garlic and ginger and a few seeds of whatever takes my fancy. It’s very easy to do and it’s delicious! Mix and match to suit yourself. Whatever you choose cut them into chunks and use the same method. Add your favourite herbs and spices. I use caraway seeds and turmeric when I do red onion and cabbage. Experiment and have fun! Find what tastes good for you.

Some people use 30gms of sea salt per litre of water as the starter but this actually kills off some of the good bacteria so I use celery and it works every time. Using salt keeps the vegetables a bit crisper.

Arthritis – practical help

Okay, before we begin let me nail my colours to the mast. I am not a medical professional. I am 75 years of age and previously worked as a stress therapist. I do not take any pills – at all. Not paracetamol or its equivalent or anti-inflammatory drugs, aspirin. Nothing. They are not necessary and worse, they can help exacerbate the problem. And what do doctors prescribe…?

What I am about to outline is the result of my years of experimentation, trial and error trying to find the root cause of arthritis and what to do to relieve the constant pain, increase my mobility and generally retain a quality of life. What you are about to read is simple, proven, practical advice. What you do with that information is up to you.

Let’s start at the beginning. Arthritis is an autoimmune disease. The medical definition is as follows:

Immune system disorders cause abnormally low activity or over activity of the immune system. In cases of immune system overactivity, the body attacks and damages its own tissues (autoimmune diseases). Immune deficiency diseases decrease the body’s ability to fight invaders, causing vulnerability to infections in response to an unknown trigger, the immune system may begin producing antibodies that instead of fighting infections, attack the body’s own tissues. Treatment for autoimmune diseases generally focuses on reducing immune system activity.

An unknown trigger… ? Since our bodies are well designed to self heal why this anomaly? The problems arise when the immune system cells target the body’s own healthy tissues signalling the body to attack them. i.e attack itself. Now think about that. Our bodies are designed to withstand tremendous damage and survive so how is this suicide situation possible? Studies indicate these diseases likely result from interactions between genetic and environmental factors. In other words, the medical profession has no idea what they are or what causes them. But we do know some autoimmune diseases are more common when people are in contact with certain environmental exposures, such as the junk sold to us as food for the past 150 years.

Could it be as simple as a dietary change and all will be well? Possibly – according to Dr. Steven Gundry in his excellent book, The Plant Paradox. The findings of Patrick Holford and Jerome Burne in their excellent book, Food is Better Medicine Than Drugs come to much the same conclusion – with additional information. The food you put in your mouth dictates your health. That is a simple and undisputed fact. For the past 150 years the food and drugs industry have been hard at work poisoning us. I appreciate for some this will be difficult to accept but examine the evidence. Don’t take my word for it. For the past 150 years food and chemical producers like Heinz, Nestle, Monsanto, Bayer, etc., etc., have been poisoning us – for money. That’s it. You have a painful, life restricting disease because the people who work in these companies want to make money… and more money… and more money. You don’t matter. Their reputations and egos matter. Their share price matters. Maybe you have shares in these companies? Maybe you work for one of them?

But let me be clear, arthritis has been found in mummies and Neanderthals. It is not new. 8% of the skeletons found had arthritis compared to 16% of people today suffering. So why the increase? We can guess from now till Hell freezes over but we simply don’t know.

However, Harvard professor Daniel E. Lieberman, senior author of a paper on arthritis says, “Arthritis is a disease that becomes more common as you age, but it’s not caused by ‘wear and tear’; if anything, it might be caused by the absence of physical activity,” indicating a major way to prevent arthritis could be moving more, not less. Though still just a hypothesis, physical inactivity is his prime suspect. He says, “It is one of the biggest differences between people who live today and people who lived in the past whose risk of arthritis was much lower.” Our grandparents tended to sit much less and walk much more than we do so there might be a co-relation.

What we do know is, if you want to rid yourself of the debilitating effects of your autoimmune disease YOU are going to have to take action. And that action starts with your gut. Okay, I know that sounds weird because we are so used to the advertising lies. Wholegrain healthy wheat! Destroyer of your immune system! Yes. Fact.

If you decide to go on this journey two things will happen:

1. ) You will become a social outcast because you are going to learn things outside of the advertising lies and bear in mind 99% of your friends believe those lies. They believe in the ‘healthy’ muesli, the healthy butter ‘substitutes’ – one molecule different to plastic. Really.
2. ) You are going to have to change a great deal of your diet but it’s not hard to do, as you will learn.

So, how do you beat this beast that is robbing you of a happy, healthy life? It is remarkably easy. I’ve done it. I did my research because I refused to become a slave to infirmity; a slave to a wheelchair or a sometimes-successful surgical implant recipient. It’s a choice. It’s your choice.

I was told seven years ago I should not be able to walk. I have done more than walk these past seven years, I have danced! And I ride a bike. Do you want to know what it takes? How it’s done? Here’s the thing, knowing what it takes, and learning how to beat this terrible beast is only part of the equation. The real part is you, yes you, actually doing what you have to do. Do you know how difficult that is? It is HARD! Not because it’s really hard, it isn’t, but because the huge pharmaceutical companies and their tame attack dogs, the adverting industry, tells us it’s hard. Tell us we need their awful products. We don’t.

Okay, so let’s get to it:

Here is a list of how your body works. You might know all this already but bear with me. To have a balanced body you must have balanced body chemistry and that starts in your gut, which has a major impact on the five principal areas of your body:

1. ) Brain. The boss. Tells every other part what to do. The chemical soup that gets to the brain is a critical component of our health and that comes from the gut.
2. ) Your gut. Sorts out the chemistry (fuel) to allow your body to work. This is a crucial area. Think of pouring diesel oil into a petrol engine. It is critically important that the fuel is correct.
3. ) Heart. The pump that keeps the essential chemistry, the blood, flowing.
4. ) Blood. The fuel. The blood chemistry must be correct for your body to work to your best advantage. Think of pouring low grade petrol into a high performance engine. Bummer!
5. ) Organs. The essential partners in keeping your body cleansed of toxins and excesses and keep us breathing.

The chemistry part is where the autoimmune disease gets its chance to work. Therefore, it is critical that the chemistry part, your blood, is in good condition. Let’s have a look at the three principle hormones that govern our health – in this regard. These three combat the three hormones commonly associated with stress: Adrenalin, Cortisol and Norepinephrine.

1. ) Serotonin, the feel-good hormone. This is released after exercise and sex. It is an essential component of our well-being and it’s a great stress reducer.
2. ) Oxytocin, the touch or cuddle hormone. When we are touched and cuddled oxytocin is released and it becomes part of our good chemical soup. It makes us feel good.
3. ) Endorphins, another feel-good hormone released when we feel happy because, for example, someone says something nice about us.

Our gut produces more serotonin than our brain and it is transmitted via the Vagus nerve, the biggest nerve highway in the body, to our brain. This hormone governs 90% of what we think, do, how we feel and critically, how our body reacts to local inputs, e.g. our chemical soup. The blood.

Autoimmune diseases may be a result of bad food, bad thoughts and bad living. Bad thoughts can be a result of stress so that’s something you want to tackle. My book, The Stress Belief Paradox is available on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble etc., It is an easy-read, practical guide to getting rid of stress. Yes getting rid of it. You cannot manage stress, it is not your favourite Rottweiler on a leash. It’s a beast and it will eat you if you don’t show it the business end of your boot. And in my experience, stress plays a direct role in arthritis. They are connected – I just don’t know how but I suspect it is related to the three principal stress hormones.

So what can we change? We can change our bad food habits, step one. We can change our bad thought habits, step two and by changing these we automatically change our bad living habits. It is a simple, logical chain. Let’s get started with food. Some of these foods you can reclaim once you have your gut sorted. There is no easy route here. You have to bite the bullet to win. Here’s a list of what NOT to eat.

• All wheat products. Bread, pasta, pizza, cakes, biscuits, etc., are out. This is essential.
• All sugar, sweeteners, etc. Sugar is a poison. There are moves afoot in the US to have it banned as a food. Scientists are claiming it is a poison. However, the sugar lobby is very rich and massive. Chances of the scientists winning…?
• Potatoes – and all things derived from them. And that includes crips and potato chips.They are the wrong type of starch but you can reclaim a few later as they are a good source of fibre and various nutrients.
• To begin with ban all citrus fruits. You can let them back bit by bit when your body signals it can tolerate them. Give it a few weeks. Just a few weeks out of a lifetime.
• All cereals: wheat, rye, barley, oats, rice. That ‘healthy’ muesli is your enemy! There has been extensive research on this subject over 50 years, which shows modern cereals are bad for us. However, since I love porridge I sneak in a bowl every month or so and I enjoy it! A bit of guilty pleasure is good for the soul.
• Peas, beans, soy, chickpeas, lentils. If you cook these in a pressure cooker you can eat them. However, peanuts and cashews, which are beans, are out!
• Seeds: pumpkin, sunflower.
• Tomatoes, cucumbers, aubergine, bell peppers, pumpkins. Take the skins off tomatoes and deseed them and you can eat them. I love tomatoes, I grow them, but if I fail to observe the rules for just two slices of tomato in a salad I pay for it! They are rich in certain vitamins and minerals that are good for men. Otherwise cook them in a pressure cooker to drive out the pesky lectins, which do part of the damage.
• Sunflower oil, peanut oil, soy oil, canola and vegetable oil. Lots of recent research is telling us to avoid these products like the plague because of the way they are produced.
• Shell fish. Your body needs some of the things found in shellfish and you can get them back but for now they are off your list. However, check the labels. A great many are farmed meaning they are fed antibiotics and various other things that are definitely not good for humans.
• Liver – liver is good for you but for now don’t eat it. You can get it back bit by bit. I love liver and onions and as long as I limit it to once a month I have no problems whatsoever.
• Beer. Helps replace your salts and regulates your Ph levels but it’s bad for arthritis. But sometimes there has to be a common sense trade off. Expire from heat exhaustion or down a beer? A no brainer.
• Red wine – in excess. In moderation it is good for you.

It is actually an extensive list but these are the common foods you are likely to be eating. When you really think about it you will realise how many other foods are available to eat. Foods that do not attack you. Such as:

• Butter. Is there a better taste than President French butter? Delicious! As is Spanish butter.
• Goat’s cheese. I am fortunate to live near a small producer who makes the real deal McNeil.
• Lettuce, which you must always wash thoroughly. Never accept those labels that say, “prewashed.” In what?
• Avocados.
• Olive oil, almond oil, coconut oil.
• Garlic. I don’t buy this from supermarkets. Where I live there are plenty of bio sellers.
• Ginger. Something else I grow. I love it!
• Curcumin, basil, mint, parsley. I start my day with half a lemon squeezed into a tall glass of warm water, a teaspoon of curcumin added with a good pinch of black pepper. I think it’s delicious and this is one of the super tricks that has made a noticeable difference to my pain level and, therefore, my mobility.
• White fish – non farmed. Read the label. However, keep an eye on the type of fish you buy. You don’t want fish that live to be 107, they will be loaded with many toxins, including mercury.
• Salmon – wild.
• Sardines, anchovies. Oily fish generally is good for us but mackerel has been seriously over-fished so I don’t buy it.
• Cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy, chard, green and red cabbage, onions, Brussel sprouts, celery, leeks, carrots, beets, cilantro, artichokes, palm hearts, okra, mushrooms, spinach, fennel, endive. You don’t have to be Escoffier to work out a whole range of soups, stews and stir fries using this lot.
• Turnips, parsnips, tiger nuts, sweet potato, green bananas.
• Eggs – not supermarket. Those are full of antibiotics and growth hormones, which is bad enough news if you’re a chicken but you’re human and definitely do not want that stuff inside you.
• Free range chicken – really free range not the crap sold in supermarkets as free range. It isn’t! But, depending on where you live, they are not easy to find.
• Meat in the form of beef, wild game, venison, lamb.

EVERTYTHING ELSE must be directed away from your mouth.

When you examine this list you can see that with just a few mild adjustments your diet could switch from autoimmune enabler to autoimmune killer. It is really that simple. To clear the many years of bad food out of your system will take time. Your body has become used to the poisonous lectins and chemicals in the banned foods. Foods that help to cause your arthritis. Here’s the hard part – accepting it is up to you. There are no magic pills, no drugs, NOTHING that can stop this modern plague but you. Your choice. It takes patience and a will to win. Do not expect instant results. Be patient. Work patiently for 6 weeks and you will feel a difference. In 6 months your life will be changed. Does that sound good? It is entirely possible.

Things to add that have in my experience made a noticeable difference to my mobility, pain level and general well-being:

1. ) Fermented veggies. An absolute must to get your gut sorted. (Lots of info on the web) And sorting the gut is the first and most crucial step. I make my own, takes 20 minutes. (I’ll post a recipe separately.)
2. ) Hemp oil capsules. Queen Victoria used marijuana for her arthritis problems – until Big Pharma stepped in and lobbied to have it made illegal. Can you guess why?
3. ) Vitamin B3 1000 mg – fish oil. Looked on as a first step must-do.
4. ) Vitamin B complex.
5. ) COQ10 – an antioxidant. Green tea is also an antioxidant and I take it regularly.
6. ) Nettle tea – it’s very refreshing cold with a bit of mint. I grow nettles in tubs for the purpose.
7. ) I take 8000 IUs of Vitamin D3 with K2. This has had a noticeable effect on my pain level. Various doctors recommend a minimum daily dose of 10,000 IUs but I am testing different strengths. Upping from 4000 to 8000 IUs has made a noticeable difference.
8. ) As previously mentioned a teaspoon of curcumin (turmeric) with a good pinch of black pepper in warm water first thing in the morning. This has had a noticeable, beneficial effect on my pain levels and mobility but its effect took time to build up.
9. ) Another addition – massage. It is wonderful! It works! My doctor told me it would make no difference. Various sources I have researched all say the same thing. I suspect none of these people suffer from arthritis. My doctor, like I suspect the majority, knows precious little about arthritis or massage. Massage has played a key role in maintaining body flexibility.

I should point out that when I say, ‘my doctor’, I don’t see doctors from one year’s end to the next.

So what sort of overall difference has this regime made to me over 7 years? Well from not being able to walk 6 feet, literally, and being in constant, nagging pain, and is there anything more debilitating than that constant pain? I now walk wherever I want to go without dreading the walk. I do an easy 2 kms just shopping with absolutely no pain or a very small background nag late in the afternoon having spent all day on my feet. I do exercises sitting on my sofa to get rid of that. (For a later blog) I can climb stairs and ladders with no difficulty or pain and I pretty well get about as well as anyone I know. I have not yet tried a long, 7 kms, walk but I’m working up to it. As a test.

Now your thoughts. Our thoughts have been almost 100% governed by money. Not health, not humanity, not integrity. Money. Look at the ridiculously over-lit, middle-class images portrayed in television and magazine advertising encouraging us to take all manner of pills, potions and lotions to relieve pain, only to have it return worse than before. It is advertising that controls our life. I suggest, for your health, you turn the TV off. Turn those damned adverts off!

What else to do?

Think positively in every situation. Never let the negatives dictate your life. This negative thinking is part of the modern disease, the part that also affects your autoimmune disease. You know that thing when you say, ‘Oh what a lovely day!’ and someone says, ‘But it’s going to rain later.’ Or, ‘I’m glad I did that,’ and someone says, ‘But you could have been hurt.’ You know, that constant seeking of a negative that some people do. Do NOT be infected by them because negativity upsets your hormone balance and your chemical soup that feeds the brain. It’s a simple cycle.

Seek the positive in EVERY situation and you will find it. When you do you will release both serotonin and endorphins, your feel-good friends. They help to combat your autoimmune disease. Remember, you body gave this disease to you. It’s not like the flu that you get from someone else. It’s yours. You gave birth to it, you own it. YOU can get rid of it.

Trick from the box:

A trick before you get up in the morning: lie in bed and imagine your legs get hot, really hot, now focus on the area that is giving you a problem, your knees for example. Lie there for 20 minutes and let the body do its work. This is an ancient and very effective pain reducing technique. It might take you a couple of weeks to master this but keep at it. It works! I get up every morning with absolutely no pain. Try this easy-to-do trick.

Here’s another: last thing, before you go to sleep, focus on the area of your body that hurts. Now tell your brain to fix it. Yes literally talk with your brain and tell it to fix it. In the morning do the hot routine and feel the difference in only 2 weeks. Costs you nothing.

Everything is up to you. It takes courage, patience and a will to beat this terrible disease, inflicted, in part, by poisonous rubbish being disguised as food.

I will follow this blog with some simple exercises you can easily do at home standing and sitting to help strengthen the muscle structure round you knees and ankles.

Courage, good luck and do not look back. There is no miracle cure. You are your cure. You. And, like me, you can make it work.

Mental Health

Sanity is a relative term. Who decides? If there are several thousand species of birds, some of which have only very, very minor differences from another bird, why do we continue to categorise humans into one species with six sub-species: oriental, white, black, asian, aboriginal and arab?

If we can understand the concept of diversity in birds why can we not understand it in humans? So, is an autistic person different or just another species of human being? Who decides they are mentally not equal?

Schizophrenia is said to be present in one form or another in 15% of the western population. The population of Europe is 738 million, which means 110 million people are suffering from one of the several variants of this debilitating mental illness – if these figures are correct. If we add America’s 304 million and Canada’s 34 million inhabitants the population figure climbs to 1,076 million people., which means the total number affected by this one mental illness would be 161 million people. A staggering number.

Others quote 2% as being affected not 15% but that still equates to almost 8 million people in the USA and Canada, 15 million people across Europe and 1.22 million in the UK. These numbers are huge and do not include the myriad of other mental illnesses, like depression, that have affected Van Gogh, Kurt Cobain, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edar Allan Poe, Billy Joel, Heath Ledger, J.K. Rowling and Tennessee Williams among a very long list of others.

However, if we regard schizophrenics, for example, as a variety of human species we begin to see a much clearer picture of how different people are.  Look at this logically, we humans look vastly different we walk, talk, think and move differently. We look at other men/women, cars, food, places to live/visit, clothes, etc., differently. A dazzling array of differences and yet the scientists tell us we are one species but a bird with a tiny speck less red on its beak is an entirely different species to another with a very slightly larger speck. They claim there are over 10,000 different species of birds. Are we really expected to take this ‘science’ seriously?

If we saw those with ‘mental illnesses’, whatever illness it may be, as just another type we could better relate, better manage and better integrate into our population as a whole. Why is it that human intolerance is so high that it prevents us from doing this? Some countries are so distrustful of foreigners, France for example, that they are defined by their xenophobia. Are they really the same species as New Zealanders or Canadians who could not be more open or welcoming?

Is this the natural condition of humans? Are we predisposed to casting out all that does not resemble us mentally and physically? Is that how nature works? If so, why are the birds doing okay? Is it just a human thing?

Politicians ignore mental health but it is quite clear from these numbers it should be a priority. Let me put this into context, in the USA & Canada there are 1.3 million heart attacks per year. In other words more than five times as many people suffer from mental illness with the accompanying net loss to that continent’s net economy.

The figures for the UK are 275,000 with about 120,000 of these being fatal. This means four and a half times as many people suffer from schizophrenia. This is only one of many types of mental illness. The net cost to the economy is huge in terms of lost income. The cost in human terms is even bigger. People are cut off, excluded and left out even when they have a gift, a talent or a brilliance to add to the population.

How much money is being pumped into heart research and surgery when, as latest evidence shows, a high percentage (more than 30%) is caused by smoking and smoke-filled environments? In other words, largely self-inflicted.

Where is the corresponding research into mental differences? Maybe a very large number of those defined as mentally ill are not ill at all, for their type, they are just different and it is those differences we need to understand. This will take in the first instance a decision to do it and there is not a single politician anywhere willing to take that step.

Mental health is neither sexy nor a vote catcher in societies whose primary aim is to become a useless ‘personality’.

Hello world!

The world is going to hell in a hand basket. If paper money has no value, which it doesn’t, how can banks start to lend again when there is nothing to back up the currency – except hot air? Where have governments magically produced the money from that they are giving to banks? Answer, there is no money unless they print it and if they print it hyper inflation is but a heartbeat behind. Hyper inflation means you will need literally a suitcase full of paper money to buy a coffee. Unemployment will take off like a Saturn rocket.

These Government actions would indicate that the real crash is yet to come. We are in a honeymoon period that may end very abruptly.

How will you cope in such a situation? Have you thought about it? You should. How will you eat? Can you produce your own food? What use will your car be? How will you heat your home? Do you have a private supply of heating fuel such as solar or wood? Are you prepared to be rounded up and put in a prison because you are a foreigner in the country where you currently live? In other words, how will you survive? Does this sound fanciful? Read your history.

If paper money ceases to exist, the only real value will be in precious metals. Why? because the smart guys have already got a mountain of the stuff stored. They have already decided what will come and they will have all the power. What have you got? A family, a mortgage, responsibilities? Just the kind of things to keep you shackled to the ‘hope’ of better days. Best you wake up and smell the stink of approaching beasts.

It’s a horrible thought but it is better to be 100% prepared for nothing than zero percent prepared for a catastrophe.