Sarah Allen, a former patient of RA (rheumatoid arthritis) explains how she managed to successfully put her arthritis into remission.
Sarah had begun feeling RA symptoms somewhere at the age of 25, and after 3 or 4 years of struggling with them, she consulted Dr. Mercola. She was a competitive triathlete, with a good diet, so she was wondering why she was experiencing pain in her feet and fingers.
She experienced migrating pain and many tendonitis problems throughout her entire body. Various Western doctors took about 3 years before finally setting her diagnosis. This was probably because it didn’t show in her blood. She didn’t have the RA factor and she had normal levels of C-reactive protein (CRP).
Signs of RA
One of the distinctive features of rheumatoid arthritis is pain in the hands and/or feet. Usually, it affects the proximal joints (those closest to your palm) more than the distal ones (those further out in the fingers).
The blood checks don’t matter when it comes to RA. If you are experiencing pain in these locations, especially if the pain is symmetrical (the same joints on feet or both hands), then the chances you have rheumatoid arthritis are high.
Rheumatoid arthritis is less common than degenerative joint disease, or osteoarthritis. Treating degenerative arthritis is easy if you know what a healthy lifestyle consists of. RA is an autoimmune disease, which means the body is destroying itself, so it’s a far more complex disease. It can even be fatal, as some have committed suicide because of the crippling pain.
Less than 1% of people with RA have a spontaneous remission. Certain disability happens in 50 to 70% of patients, within 5 years after the beginning of RA, whereas half will stop working in 10 year period.
Rheumatoid Arthritis Is Typically Treated with Toxic Drugs
Conventional medicine doesn’t offer much hope for people with RA but just ameliorates or treats the RA symptoms, with the help of highly toxic drugs like methotrexate, prednisone, and such which interfere with TNF (tumor necrosis factor), like Enbrel.
Sarah is a real example that there is an alternative and drug-free method for this disease, which will prevent suffering from the conventional treatment method.
After her diagnosis was set, Sarah visited a well-known Milwaukee rheumatologist who told her to stop running to prevent becoming permanently disabled. Furthermore, he prescribed her a low dose of the anti-cancer medicine methotrexate.
Even though the drug could be effective, its side effects are atrocious, so Sarah needed to make a monthly check of her liver status. She began to lose her hair although she was just taking a low dosage of the drug for about 3 months.
Sarah was afraid of the effects of the drug on her body. She was told by the physical therapist that there are many natural approaches for this disease, so she started reading Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown and Henry Scammell’s book “The Road Back: Rheumatoid Arthritis, its Cause and its Treatment” where she read that RA could be somehow related to an infection. After that, she made an appointment with the well-respected board-certified rheumatologist Dr. Brown.
According to Dr. Brown, rheumatoid arthritis was an infection caused by mycoplasmas, so instead of using the standard of care for RA in the ’40s and ’50s, prednisone, he used the antibiotic tetracycline.
He eventually adjusted the treatment to more powerful discriminating tetracycline forms, like minocycline. He successfully brought more than 10,000 RA patients into remission. Dr. Mercola was inspired by his treatment and the positive results, so he modified the treatment to the point where he excluded antibiotics completely.
Sarah’s Treatment
On the first meeting with Sarah, Dr. Mercola discussed with her about her diet. He proposed that there may be a genetic influence since Sarah was Scottish-Irish. Moreover, some of her family members also had autoimmune issues, like amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and multiple sclerosis (MS). According to her genetic background, Sarah might have an intolerance of gluten and wheat.
Dr. Mercola suggested she eliminate wheat and gluten from her diet, as well as sugar, and processed foods. She answered a very thorough questionnaire about her energy levels, how she metabolizes food, and the stress in her life.
He gave her a special diet according to the gathered data and her blood type, including a lot of vegetable juicing, which reportedly has helped her a lot. She juiced green juice probably about 48 ounces a day.
Furthermore, she also ate a lot of ostriches, organic grass-fed beef, raw dairy, bison, and free-range chicken. She was also recommended to eat raw eggs and raw egg yolks.
She started buying a variety of meats and vegetables from local farmer’s markets she knew their method of raising animals and growing food. Sarah also included a lot of probiotics in her diet, as well as increased the intake of vitamin D. She started using food to redesign and strengthen her immunity, as opposed to suppressing it with medicines to control RA.
Besides changes in her diet, she was also advised to address her stress in everyday life. She was a passionate teacher at that point, so she spent a lot of time working beyond what was healthy. Moreover, Sarah was experiencing some emotional stress in her life as well as she was spending a few hours a week on her triathlon training.
According to Dr. Mercola, as well as Eastern Medicine, emotions and stress have a great influence on the immune system and are one of the main causes of RA. She even started thinking about whether the stress and the amount of work in her life had triggered her disease.
According to Dr. Mercola’s recommendations, Sarah reduced the amount of work and spent more time on rest and enjoying activities. He also thought of Sarah’s Emotional Freedom Technique, which is a traditional method for stress relief, which she incorporated into her everyday life to help her deal with stress and anxiety daily.
Vitamin D Importance
Medical News Today is extremely important as it stimulates 200 to 300 anti-microbial peptides which are more potent than antibiotics used for the improvement and regulation of immunity and combating infections. Like many other RA sufferers, Sarah also noticed that her RA symptoms were worse at the time of winter, as opposed to summer when they would often dissipate. This is a giant sign that vitamin D is at work.
The vitamin D levels in the blood will drop dangerously when the sun exposure is at its lowest, somewhere in January, February, or March, unless you are aggressively addressing your level of vitamin D with supplementation or sun exposure. It’s highly important to improve your vitamin D levels, and people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis should especially check it every month so that they adjust the dosage they are taking.
People using a supplement should take the dosage needed to reach and keep a therapeutic level of 50 to 70 ng/ml. Another important factor is nourishing the gut microbiome. Besides consuming more fermented foods, you should eliminate sugar from your diet, since it’s food for pathogenic microbes, thus destroying your immunity and leaving you susceptible to all kinds of autoimmune diseases.
Sarah learned how to ferment her dairy products and vegetables. She was producing her yogurt, kombucha, milk kefir, cultured butter, and coconut kefir. Although her system was balanced after 2 years, she noticed a significant difference after just 2 weeks. Her cravings for bread, wheat, and sugar diminished. Dr. Mercola made a live cell analysis before and after the diet, and hers showed a leaky gut and the presence of digestive proteins in her bloodstream.
After 3 months following her strict diet, Sarah felt a lot better and has lost 10 pounds. She felt so much lighter and had a lot more energy. However, the moment she saw the results of her live cell analysis that her blood cells were perfectly strong, round, and healthy, and when she saw her blood was changed, she truly believed that the real medicine was food.
She resumed her everyday activities, and she even participated in and won a triathlon. Her RA symptoms slowly diminished, and after 2 years of following her specific diet, her symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis went into complete remission. Now, after 10 years, her condition is still great.
She works out and trains Brazilian capoeira which includes dance, martial arts, and acrobatics. At the age of 43, she can do gymnastics and back flips. She still runs, swims, and cycles. When in the north, Sarah does yoga and cross-country skiing. Overall, she is exceptionally active and most importantly healthy, feeling even younger than her real age.
There IS Hope for Patients with Rheumatoid Arthritis
Dr. Mercola strongly advises this protocol to all RA patients and physicians. It can also help in cases of other autoimmune diseases, like inflammatory bowel disease and multiple sclerosis, whose disease process is similar.
The recovery of Sarah is real evidence of the body’s self-healing ability, provided that you lead a healthy lifestyle and give it what it needs.
Initially, Sarah’s doctor disapproved of her method and said that she should continue with methotrexate. Another rheumatologist told her that RA would return in her body in 10 to 12 years much worse, although she didn’t have any symptoms at all. Sarah was extremely courageous, unlike many other RA sufferers who are too afraid to go against the recommendations of their doctor or are just stuck in the conventional paradigm.
Moreover, Sarah’s insuring company refused to pay her treatment visits and tests. Eventually, after she appealed her insurance’s denial of reimbursement, they agreed to pay just for the medicine that was initially prescribed to her.
Although she spent about $2000 to $3000 in total, she didn’t need to visit Dr. Mercola, or other specialists anymore, as well so take some toxic drugs for the rest of her life. So the money was surely well spent.
Besides spending money on the needed ingredients, she also spends many hours in her kitchen preparing the food, but she doesn’t regret anything. She even now sees food as magic and one of the most important gifts from nature.
Summary of Crucial Lifestyle Changes if You Have RA
The protocol described in this article is surely extremely effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis. Conventional rheumatologists don’t have much to offer except for hazardous medicines which only relieve the symptoms but do not do anything about the root cause of the disease, which proceeds to destroy the body and cause deformities like crippling joints.
The following list is a summary of Sarah’s diet and Dr. Mercola’s drug-free protocol. We strongly encourage this protocol to any with rheumatoid arthritis.
- Eat real, organic, and locally grown food and completely avoid sugar, especially fructose, processed foods, and most grains. Limiting the amount of fruit will be also good for many people.
- Consume a lot of animal-based high-quality omega-3 fats. Krill oil is especially beneficial since it’s a more effective anti-oxidant than fish oil.
- Vegetable juicing and raw food are highly recommended.
- The daily amount of 4 mg of astaxanthin is recommended for effective pain relief related to inflammation. According to one study, patients with RA reduced their pain by 35% and improved their ability to do daily tasks by 40%, only after 8 weeks of taking astaxanthin. It is especially important to those taking prednisone, which can cause blindness or reduce vision.
- Make sure your vitamin D levels are in the range of 50-70 ng/ml since the deficiency of this vitamin is strongly related to RA development.
- Consume 4 to 6 ounces of fermented veggies a day, to supply 10 trillion of good bacteria (10% of the bacteria population in the gut). Learn how to prepare them in the GAPS book, or listen to Dr. Mercola’s interview with Caroline Barringer.
- Exercise regularly.
- Although Sarah didn’t need it, try a low dose of LDN (Naltrexone). It’s non-toxic and inexpensive and has proven to be extremely efficient in getting patients off of their hazardous arthritis medicines. It provides relief and is much safer than the usual prescribed toxic drugs.
More Natural Pain Relievers
The purpose is to be as pain-free and comfortable as possible with the least drug amount. Besides Naltrexone in low dosage, here are some more foods that can help in RA pain treatment:
1. Curcumin (turmeric). This powerful anti-inflammatory has been proven that it’s highly beneficial in the treatment of acute and chronic pain. It affects over 700 genes and can hinder both the synthesis and the excessive activity of 5-lipoxygenase (5-LOX) cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2), and other enzymes related to inflammation.
One study published in 2012 showed that a highly bioavailable curcumin form is more effective in reducing rheumatoid symptoms like joint swellings and tenderness than the NSAID drug Voltaren.
2. Another herb beneficial for RA pain and inflammation is Boswellia (Indian frankincense, or Boswellia).
3. Ginger can also provide pain relief and anti-inflammatory effects. Steep fresh ginger in boiling water to make a tea or grate it in veggie juice.
Via Medical News Today | Dr.Mercola