Arthritis and gout are so closely related, it’s ridiculous. For the most
part, each arises from dietary choices where pleasing the senses, through the
absurd and continual ingestion of anything and everything that had a face and a
mother, and alcohol, takes precedence over intelligence.
Basically, there are two types of arthritis – osteoarthritis and rheumatoid
arthritis.
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the local or generalized degeneration of the joint
inflammation of the bony “lips and spurs” at the edges of the joints. The onset
is gradual, with progressive joint enlargement, which may involve single or
multiple joints, although not migrating from joint to joint.
Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is an inflammatory disease involving the proteins
of the muscle and blood (albumin), which involve the lubricating fluid secreted
by the membranes of the joint cavities, tendon sheaths, etc., surrounding the
joint or joints. Localized wasting away (atrophy) of the muscle and bone are
common. The onset is abrupt, the synovial membrane thickens, there is joint
swelling with redness and tenderness, symmetrical joint involvement is common,
and RA can migrate from joint to joint.
The contributing factors of OA and RA include sulfur deficiency, poor
eliminations, enzyme deficiency, poor circulation, toxemia, excess flesh and
soda in the diet, raw vegetable deficiency, excess acid-forming foods, excess
irritants like coffee, tea, salt, spices and alcohol, vitamin and mineral
deficiencies – excess copper coming from copper pipes, which lower iron, gluten
intolerance, nightshade food (tomato, potato, eggplant, peppers, tobacco)
intolerance, glandular imbalances stemming from low thyroid or adrenals –
stress, overly refined diet and corticosteroids -, psychological factors
involving long-held resentments, worry, envy, fear, anxiety, depression and/or
deep shock, obesity, lack of exercise, and chronic fatigue, for openers.
Of all the diseases that affect humanity, arthritis, in its multitude of
forms, is one of the most debilitating and widespread. Orthodox treatments have
proven unsatisfactory and completely unable to cure these disorders.
The reason is simple: due to the complex science of causes and origins
(etiology) and unconstitutional nature of most forms of arthritis, only
individualized therapy has any hope of removing the cause.
There is no one quick and easy cure, no magic pill (although organic sulfur
crystals will reduce and alleviate the pain naturally), and no magic diets
suited for all.
With arthritis, as with most degenerative diseases, there are as many
different approaches as there are people suffering from the disease, and each
one is unique.
Only when each of the causative factors is recognized and corrected can true
healing take place. It always involves lifestyle changes and almost never is
the improvement rapid.
What this means is that the arthritis sufferer who can ever hope for real
improvement must have a real desire for health and the persistence and patience
to obtain it at all cost. The rewards, however, are well worth the effort.
The dream of a body free of pain can only be fully understood by one who
lives day and night with severe arthritis.
As to the orthodox approach to arthritis, never has there been anyone who
received drug therapy who did not become progressively worse. This is the
ramification of simply treating a symptom. While aspirin, which is advised in
most cases of painful OA or RA, does help relieve immediate pain, it certainly
does not effect a cure.
In addition to its other side effects, as well as reactivating or causing
ulcers, aspirin lowers vitamin C levels, which are essential in the health of
connective tissue, useful as a detoxifying agent, and needed for proper adrenal
function.
Aspirin depletes the adrenal glands,
and in toxic doses will cause a salicylic acid condition (aspirin is prepared
from salicin or phenol, causing an increase in uric acid levels, which is a
cause of gout), leading to paralysis of the respiratory center as well as
central blood vessel paralysis.
If taken over a long period of time, aspirin can mimic other diseases such
as Meniere’s syndrome and cause severe respiratory distress and mental
confusion. Most health authorities now agree that if the present FDA
regulations existed when aspirin was first produced, it would now be a
prescription drug only.
Self-induced aspirin toxicity is very common. Although no physician, in his
right mind (which eliminates most), would ever prescribe aspirin in doses that
could become toxic. The fact is that people often take more aspirin than
suggested.
This is probably the case with the elderly who suffer from poor memory and
cannot honestly remember if they took their medication three or thirteen times
in a day. For many with pain, anything that gives some relief three times a day
might be better six to ten times a day.
Cortisone is another prescribed drug for arthritis, especially for RA. Compared
to cortisone, aspirin is an essential vitamin! Cortisone has to be one of the
most deceptive and dangerous drugs ever produced. Its well-known
anti-inflammatory effects hide its insidious side effects.
Cortisone depresses the immunological system so dramatically that even minor
infections can become life threatening; it directly depresses the function of
the adrenal gland, the gland that is so often the cause of the disorder in the
first place. Cortisone causes calcium depletion, resulting in osteoporosis,
another major cause of arthritis. It also aggravates peptic ulcers and in
overdose will induce symptoms of obesity, muscle wasting and weakness, poor
wound healing, bruising, high blood pressure, diabetes, psychiatric disturbance
with balding, excess body hair, and menstrual disorders in women. In short,
cortisone sucks!
The common medical opinion that “diet has nothing to do with arthritis”, and
that “you will have to live with it”, are simply not acceptable nor are they
true. Only when the individualized concept of disease causation is understood
will the true cause and cure of arthritis at long last be recognized.
Diet, as with many other degenerative or autoimmune disorders, stands out as
the major detrimental influence. Most sufferers of OA, RA, and gout have
dietary patterns that are clearly a problem.
Heavy flesh consumption leads the pack. Flesh contains anywhere from 20 to
50 times more phosphorus than calcium. The phosphorus then stimulates the
parathyroid glands, responsible for the mobilization of leaching the calcium
from the bones. This extra calcium is then deposited around the joints,
explaining the common finding in arthritis of less dense bones with calcium
buildup around the joint connections.
This one factor alone may be the reason why vegetarians and especially
vegans have less of an incidence of OA, RA, or gout than those that eat
anything that had a face and a mother. A good vegetarian diet will have a much
better phosphorus-to-calcium ratio.
Another source of excess phosphorus in the diet is soda. Do an experiment –
fill up a glass with Coke or Pepsi, put nail in it, and leave it alone for a
about a week. Then look at the nail, or should I say, what’s left of it. This
is what happens to your bones, joints and organs.
Another aspect of concern in the average diet is an excess of refined
carbohydrates and sweets. Not only are these foods robbed of many of their
naturally occurring vitamins and minerals, the relative ratios of many minerals
are completely altered.
Not only are the absolute values of vitamins and minerals important to human
health, but also their ratios and interactions. Vitamin E, magnesium, vitamin B
complex, and essential fibers are removed by the refining of whole grains.
These are all very important in the prevention and cure of many degenerative
conditions, arthritis and gout included.
Refined carbohydrates, especially sugar, contribute to a generalized acid
condition in the body, especially when accompanied by a diet low in fresh
vegetables.
Fresh vegetables are a protective factor against arthritic changes, whereas
processed vegetables can actually aggravate the condition. Once again, the
essential mineral balances are upset in the processing.
One example is the sodium and potassium ratio. Fresh vegetables usually have
a higher potassium-to-sodium ration then when canned. The amount of salt in the
diet has increased dramatically over the past 100 years.
Coffee is another problem. In fact, so many facets of the average
arthritis’s diet are negative health factors that all of them cannot be
mentioned here. What is needed to eliminate any possible health risks is a
complete individual dietary appraisal. Then there’s the question of food
allergy that needs to be investigated, especially in RA.
Remember, OA, RA, and gout are degenerative disorders and possibly
autoimmune diseases that have taken years to develop. If you are thinking
subtle changes, do not waste your time. Like I said in the beginning, it will
require radical lifestyle changes.
The fastest results will come from raw vegetable juice fasting.
Carrot, celery juice with an apple
thrown in to sweeten it up is great.
Potassium broth – one quarter inch of
the outer peelings, including the skin, of potatoes, fresh parsley, unpeeled
carrots, beet greens, onions, garlic, and any other organically grown green
vegetable, simmered in a large pot of water for 30 to 40 minutes, strained and
drunk, discarding the veggies, and storing the excess in a glass jar and
refrigerate for up to 2 days – is excellent as well.
Also drinking wheatgrass juice is excellent as is alfalfa mint tea and
watercress, celery and parsley juice.
This fast can go from 7 to 21 days.
Next is the raw, non-citrus diet lasting two to four weeks and comprised of
raw green vegetables with NO animal proteins whatsoever.
All stimulants such as coffee, tea, alcohol, nicotine, or sweets are
forbidden.
The best veggies and grains to eat are all green vegetables, seaweeds,
watercress, parsley, celery, okra, carrots, Spirulina, wheatgrass, avocado,
bananas, pecans, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, kale, alfalfa sprouts, quinoa,
millet, garlic and onions.
And above all, stay away from citrus, dairy, wheat, all flesh, refined
carbohydrates, alcohol, salt, fried foods, drinking with your meals, and the
nightshade veggies. Some people have a strong adverse reaction to the
nightshade veggies, so better to be safe, not sorry.
For supplements, vitamins A, B complex, C, E, calcium, magnesium, manganese,
copper, selenium, and zinc are beneficial. And see a Naturopath not an MD.
Gout follows the same pattern except that it arises from ingesting great
quantities of flesh, along with alcohol.
Again, high uric acid in the body plays a strong hand with gout as does
excessive amounts of refined carbohydrates and sugar.
One with gout needs to avoid purine diets. Purine equals flesh. Following the same regimen as OA and RA will
bring results.
Remember, you took your whole life to get here, so do not expect a reversal
overnight.
Aloha!
Just to put things in perspective, after I graduated from Weequahic High School and before going to Seton Hall University, I had a part-time job working for a butcher. I was the delivery guy and occasionally had to go to the slaughterhouse to pick up products for the store. Needless to say, I had no consciousness nor awareness, as change never came then despite the horrors I witnessed on an almost daily basis.
After graduating with a degree in accounting from Seton Hall, I eventually got married and moved to a town called Livingston. Livingston was basically a yuppie community where everyone was judged by the neighborhood they lived in and their income. To say it was a “plastic” community would be an understatement.
Livingston and the shallowness finally got to me. I told my wife I was fed up and wanted to move. She made it clear she had to be near her friends and New York City. I finally got my act together and split for Colorado.
I was living with a lady in Aspen at the end of 1974, when one day she said, ” let’s become vegetarians”. I have no idea what possessed me to say it, but I said, “okay”! At that point I went to the freezer and took out about $100 worth of frozen, dead body parts and gave them to a welfare mother who lived behind us. Well, everything was great for about a week or so, and then the chick split with another guy.
So here I was, a vegetarian for a couple weeks, not really knowing what to do, how to cook, or basically how to prepare anything. For about a month, I was getting by on carrot sticks, celery sticks, and yogurt. Fortunately, when I went vegan in 1990, it was a simple and natural progression. Anyway, as I walked around Aspen town, I noticed a little vegetarian restaurant called, “The Little Kitchen”.
Let me back up just a little bit. It was April of 1975, the snow was melting and the runoff of Ajax Mountain filled the streets full of knee-deep mud. Now, Aspen was great to ski in, but was a bummer to walk in when the snow was melting.
I was ready to call it quits and I needed a warmer place. I’ll elaborate on that in a minute.
But right now, back to “The Little Kitchen”. Knowing that I was going to leave Aspen and basically a new vegetarian, I needed help. So, I cruised into the restaurant and told them my plight and asked them if they would teach me how to cook. I told them in return I would wash dishes and empty their trash. They then asked me what I did for a living and I told them I was an accountant.
The owner said to me, “Let’s make a deal. You do our tax return and we’ll feed you as well”. So for the next couple of weeks I was doing their tax return, washing their dishes, emptying the trash, and learning as much as I could.
But, like I said, the mud was getting to me. So I picked up a travel book written by a guy named Foder. The name of the book was, “Hawaii”. Looking through the book I noticed that in Lahaina, on Maui, there was a little vegetarian restaurant called,” Mr. Natural’s”. I decided right then and there that I would go to Lahaina and work at “Mr. Natural’s.” To make a long story short, that’s exactly what happened.
So, I’m working at “Mr. Natural’s” and learning everything I can about my new dietary lifestyle – it was great. Every afternoon we would close for lunch at about 1 PM and go to the Sheraton Hotel in Ka’anapali and play volleyball, while somebody stayed behind to prepare dinner.
Since I was the new guy, and didn’t really know how to cook, I never thought that I would be asked to stay behind to cook dinner. Well, one afternoon, that’s exactly what happened; it was my turn. That posed a problem for me because I was at the point where I finally knew how to boil water.
I was desperate, clueless and basically up the creek without a paddle. Fortunately, there was a friend of mine sitting in the gazebo at the restaurant and I asked him if he knew how to cook. He said the only thing he knew how to cook was enchiladas. He said that his enchiladas were bean-less and dairy-less. I told him that I had no idea what an enchilada was or what he was talking about, but I needed him to show me because it was my turn to do the evening meal.
Well, the guys came back from playing volleyball and I’m asked what was for dinner. I told them enchiladas; the owner wasn’t thrilled. I told him that mine were bean-less and dairy-less. When he tried the enchilada he said it was incredible. Being the humble guy that I was, I smiled and said, “You expected anything less”? It apparently was so good that it was the only item on the menu that we served twice a week. In fact, after about a week, we were selling five dozen every night we had them on the menu and people would walk around Lahaina broadcasting, ‘enchilada’s at “Natural’s” tonight’. I never had to cook anything else.
A year later the restaurant closed, and somehow I gravitated to a little health food store in Wailuku. I never told anyone I was an accountant and basically relegated myself to being the truck driver. The guys who were running the health food store had friends in similar businesses and farms on many of the islands. I told them that if they could organize and form one company they could probably lock in the State. That’s when they found out I was an accountant and “Down to Earth” was born. “Down to Earth” became the largest natural food store chain in the islands, and I was their Chief Financial Officer and co-manager of their biggest store for 13 years.
In 1981, I started to do a weekly radio show to try and expose people to a vegetarian diet and get them away from killing innocent creatures. I still do that show today. I pay for my own airtime and have no sponsors to not compromise my honesty. One bit of a hassle was the fact that I was forced to get a Masters Degree in Nutrition to shut up all the MD’s that would call in asking for my credentials.
My doing this radio show enabled me, through endless research, to see the corruption that existed within the big food industries, the big pharmaceutical companies, the biotech industries and the government agencies. This information, unconscionable as it is, enabled me to realize how broken our health system is. This will be covered more in depth in the Introduction and throughout the book and when you finish the book you will see this clearly and it will hopefully inspire you to make changes.
I left Down to Earth in 1989, got nationally certified as a sports injury massage therapist and started traveling the world with a bunch of guys that were making a martial arts movie. After doing that for about four years I finally made it back to Honolulu and got a job as a massage therapist at the Honolulu Club, one of Hawaii’s premier fitness clubs. It was there I met the love of my life who I have been with since 1998. She made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. She said,” If you want to be with me you’ve got to stop working on naked women”. So, I went back into accounting and was the Chief Financial Officer of a large construction company for many years.
Going back to my Newark days when I was an infant, I had no idea what a “chicken” or “egg” or “fish” or “pig” or “cow” was. My dietary blueprint was thrust upon me by my parents as theirs was thrust upon them by their parents. It was by the grace of God that I was able to put things in their proper perspective and improve my health and elevate my consciousness.
The road that I started walking down in 1975 has finally led me to the point of writing my book, “A Sane Diet For An Insane World”. Hopefully, the information contained herein will be enlightening, motivating, and inspiring to encourage you to make different choices. Doing what we do out of conditioning is not always the best course to follow. I am hoping that by the grace of the many friends and personalities I have encountered along my path, you will have a better perspective of what road is the best road for you to travel on, not only for your health but your consciousness as well.
Last but not least: after being vaccinated as a kid I developed asthma, which plagued me all of my life. In 2007 I got exposed to the organic sulfur crystals, which got rid of my asthma in 3 days and has not come back in over 10 years. That, being the tip of the iceberg, has helped people reverse stage 4 cancers, autism, joint pain, blood pressure problems, migraine headaches, erectile dysfunction, gingivitis, and more. Also, because of the detoxification effects by the release of oxygen that permeates and heals all the cells in the body, it removes parasites, radiation, fluoride, free radicals, and all the other crap that is thrust upon us in the environment by Big Business.
For more, please view www.healthtalkhawaii.com and www.asanediet.com.
Namaste!
