"Instead of eating as much as possible, eat as little as possible." 18th Century - Lueges Carviri

Your desire to stay well must be continuous. You need to remind yourself, every time you plan to eat or do grocery shopping, about the reason why certain foods are not good for you.

Foods labeled "enriched" means they are first denatured, then partially restored. That attractive color in food is to make us eat it, but it and words like "quick and easy," "smooth," are really warnings to us that we should not eat it. I believe that people are changing and going back to basic foods. Natural foods are making sense to those who study and learn.

Read labels: If they have chemicals added, do not buy them.

Watch out for fatigue.

It is always present when we have arthritis. It is one of the earliest symptoms. There are two other signs that are fairly constant. A check should be made to see if you are in this condition. If so...why? Contact the best doctor for arthritis in your area and be sure and inform him that you have become knowledgeable in this field and that you will take an active part in your treatment. It is not fair to expect a doctor to heal you. He can guide you, but the journey is taken by you... not him.

One sign mentioned above is the lowering of the amount of hemoglobin or oxygen- carrying power of the blood... usually to around 70% when 100% is normal. The other sign is high blood sedimentation rate. These are signs only a doctor can check.

What is Arthritis?

The word arthritis comes from the Greek words "Arthron" and "It is," which literally means joint inflammatory disease. However, it is not only joints but connective tissue throughout the body. Also, muscles and soft tissue of several organs can be involved in the inflammatory process. Close to one hundred different conditions are classified under arthritis. All have common symptoms of aches and pains in the joints and connective tissue throughout the body.

Rheumatism is a word that is interchangeable with the word arthritis and is mostly used in European countries and by old school doctors. How arthritis inflammation starts is not well understood. Several causes have been ascribed, such as injury, infection, auto-immune diseases (body producing antibodies against itself), calcium and vitamin D deficiency.

Inflammation itself causes further damage in the joints and tissues, making them stiff and making normal movement difficult. The symptoms and some of the signs of arthritis can be classified under one of the five most common kinds. The most common form is called degenerative or Osteo-arthritis. The cause of the disease is associated with malabsorbtion of calcium and vitamin D.

Although it is more common in the elderly, young people are not immune to it and, most recently, statistics indicate that it is showing up even in babies of three and four months old. In its severest form, pain might cause disability, even committing the arthritic to a wheelchair. This form of arthritis, while labeled incurable by the conventional doctors, in reality, responds excellently to nutrition therapy. The erosion of the joint bones can be stopped or retarded by correcting calcium, manganese, vitamin D, metabolism of the body.

The most serious forms of arthritis are Rheumatoid arthritis and a disease closely related to Rheumatoid arthritis, but affecting the organs, is Systemic Lupus Erythe-matosus.

These two forms of arthritis can be very debilitating and conventional treatments require such undesirable drugs as cortisone. The patient with R.A. or Lupus can be helped by nutritional therapy. Dr. Airola gives several case studies of R.A. and their cures by nutritional therapy in his book "There Is a Cure for Arthritis"

In the "Practical Encyclopedia of Natural Healing," by Mark Bricklin, he tells about Betty Hull of Corpus Christi, Texas, who founded a non-profit organization, LEANON, which publishes "Lupus Lifeline." She outlined her personal nutrition program which put her condition into remission and off drugs.

Gout, which is referred to in literature and books written hundreds of years ago as "The King's Disease" is purely a nutritional disease. Genetically predisposed individuals produce too much uric acid. Crystals of the sodium salt of this uric acid deposit themselves in the joints and the kidney tissue.

The inflammatory process can cause permanent damage. The simplest way to prevent gouty attacks is to limit eating food that contains purine, such as sardines, bouillon, meat extracts, organ meats, anchovies, mushrooms, asparagus, spinach, artichokes, peas and beans.

The Merck Manual says drugs are so effective in lowering the serum rate content rate that restriction of the purine content of the diet is unnecessary. Really!!! Do we want to continue eating bad foods and then take drugs and pay the price in money and misery or do we want to eat the right foods and not take drugs? Doctors lean towards drugs. I believe in proper foods and no drugs. What do you think?

Mark Bricklin, in "Natural Healing," tells about using cherries to do the trick. Ludwig W. BIau, Ph.D., says he had so much torment in his big toe he was confined to a wheelchair. One day, by accident, he ate a whole bowl of cherries and the next morning the pain in his foot was almost gone. He continued to eat six cherries every day and was soon out of the wheelchair.

If he forgot to take the cherries, it only took a few days for the stabbing pain to return. After writing this up in the medical journal, he revealed that at least twelve others had had the same results. Twenty years later, he continues to eat his cherries or drink cherry juice and he remains in good health.

Ankylosing spondylitis. A rarer kind of arthritis, Ankylosing spondylitis affects men more than women. Muscle stiffness can occur, but when all the joints of the spine are involved, a humpback might result. Conventional treatment is only symptomatic, which means aspirin or cortisone is given to the patient to relieve pain.

According to John R. J. Sorneson, Ph.D., in "The Journal of International Academy of Metabology," Vol. I, No. 2, page 7, 1978, Ankylosing Spondylitis and other arthritis diseases have been cured by a special chelate copper preparation and 89% of 1,140 patients had been free of the disease for at least three years.

At the University of California at Berkeley, Dr. Francis Pottinger fed one group of cats cooked meat and cooked milk. The cats developed arthritis on this diet and died of it. The more the meat and the milk was cooked, the quicker they developed arthritis. Another controlled group of cats was fed raw food and never developed arthritis. Then, when this controlled group was eventually fed the cooked meat and cooked milk, they, too, developed arthritis. When the heat, pain and swelling disappears within a few days after eating uncooked and unprocessed foods, you will not care why it happened; you will just be thankful that they disappeared.

There is no longer any excuse for this painful arthritis condition to exist. It can only be done by you and you alone. But you will have to study and learn from this book and others. Your public library is filled with good books on the subject of nutrition therapy and arthritis. But you have to do it yourself. I repeat, it can be done if you want to.

I decided I would be devoted to the study and cure of my arthritis. I was completely exhausted from the pain and from the mental anguish that it caused. I felt there must be a way to stop it, and there is, and this is it.

Isn't that a great picture? Right now, visualize yourself within two weeks bending, and stretching, and not hurting, and throwing away all those drugs. In some cases, it will take longer, but every day there will be improvement, and you will never be as bad off as when you started this program, unless you back slide. You will be able to take a trip on just the money you save from drugs alone.

Take Mrs. A. C., who, at 51, had severe arthritis in the left hip. She needed crutches to walk, but liked her sweets and coffee breaks. She hated salads, never ate raw fruit, just sweets. Her diet was cooked foods and canned fruits and plenty of donuts, coffee and sweets. She felt she could not break the habit, but the pain finally got too bad. After a few days trying the more healthful way of eating, she found the new diet of raw foods, fruits, salads, steamed vegetables, and broiled meats easy to fix and delicious. She is now healthy and pain-free.

Why Wasn't The Diet Pushed Before? Where Was The Publicity?

It was, but it did not get the publicity it should have gotten. I am dedicated to seeing this change. Dr. DeForest Jarvis, who revealed folk medicine practices in his book "Folk Medicine and Arthritis." and "Fold medicine," pointed his finger at wheat foods, white flour, white sugar, pasteurized milk, muscle meats and citrus fruits as being the factors for some people in causing body deterioration.