Arthritis Pain Treatment Matthews NC

Fasting Away Arthritis Pain

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By Ellen Kamhi, PhD, RN and Eugene R. Zampieron, ND, MH

Although people use the term arthritis as if it were a single disease, researchers have identified an aggregate of more than 100 conditions whose common features include joint pain, stiffness, and inflammation. For millions of Americans, arthritis limits everyday movements such as walking, standing, or even holding a pencil. As they progress, arthritic conditions can cause joint deformities, brittle bones, loss of mobility, and complete destruction of the protective covering around joints.

More than 66 million Americans (nearly one in three adults) suffer from some type of arthritis, with osteoarthritis (OA) being by far the most prevalent form. It strikes more men than women under the age of 45, often as a result of accidents and injuries.

But the disease becomes three times more widespread in women after that age. And as many more baby boomers turn 50, the number of people afflicted with OA is expected to increase dramatically.

The second most prevalent form of arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), is an inflammatory disease in which the body’s immune system attacks its own healthy tissues. RA affects 3 to 4 percent of the US population, striking people of all ages, including nearly 300,000 children. Women develop RA three times more often than men, and people with a particular genetic marker (HLA-DR4) tend to have a higher incidence of the illness. Other forms of arthritis include gout, which occurs in 3 out of every 1,000 adults, or about 2 million Americans (the majority of whom are men), and less common forms such as ankylosing spondylitis, psoriatic arthritis, and infectious arthritis.

The common conventional medical approach to arthritis relies on anti-inflammatory and painkilling drugs. While these drugs provide temporary relief, they also have serious side effects. Alternative medicine, on the other hand, offers a wide range of treatment options for eliminating the often hidden causes of arthritis. Like most chronic diseases, arthritis can rarely be traced to a single cause. More often it results from a gradual degeneration of internal organs and tissues brought about by a variety of stressors and imbalances, including environmental pollutants and dietary factors. Toxic chemicals that accumulate in the body contribute significantly to this problem, impairing the function of the organs and related systems (the intestines, liver, kidneys, skin, connective tissue, and the lymphatic and respiratory systems) involved in neutralizing harmful substances. When overloaded, these organs stop working properly and no longer fully eliminate the toxins they normally process from the body, leaving a toxic residue. This “undischarged” toxicity can cause damage directly related to arthritis, such as joint degeneration and inflammation. It may, in fact, be one of the prime contributors to arthritis.

For that reason, we typically recommend that our patients undergo one or more detoxific...

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