Alternative Treatments For Arthritis

The first cure or treatment for arthritis I came across was hydrogen peroxide. Brief research online discovers numerous natural or alternative treatments for arthritis.

For information about the H2O2 arthritis treatment please visit my hubpage about drinking hydrogen peroxide.

I failed to get my dad interested in drinking H2O2 - funny about that! So I continued searching for an arthritis treatment that dad, aged 84, might be more amenable to. I found two in particular, of many protocols, so far. The first method involves particular nutritional supplements, or vitamins.

Here is the cure or treatment for arthritis recommended by Linus Pauling. It is found in his book How To Live Longer And Feel Better.

Vitamins Benefit Arthritis Patients

On page 8 of that book Linus Pauling says -

Persons with a tendency toward arthritis might benefit by increases in vitamin C, niacinamide, and vitamin B6.

On page 130 he goes on to say -

The low level of vitamin C is called hypoascorbemia by Irwin Stone and induced scurvy or anascorbemia by Cathcart...

The possible consequences of induced anascorbemia have been described by Cathcart (1981) in the following words:

The following problems should be expected with increased incidence with severe depletion of ascorbate; disorders of the immune system such as secondary infections, rheumatoid arthritis and other collagen diseases, allergic reactions to drugs, foods and other substances, chronic infections... etc. etc.

On page 204 of How To Live Longer And Fee Better, Pauling goes on to say -

Kaufman published an account of his study of 150 arthritic patients in 1943 in The Common Form off Niacin Amide Deficiency Disease, Aniacinamidosis, and in 1949 he published his study of 450 patients in The Common Form of Joint Dysfunction: Its Incidence and Treatment.

In 1955 in a report to the American Geriatric Society he stated that most of the patients improved greatly on a regimen of 1 to 5 g of niacinamide per day in divided doses (six to sixteen per day), continuing for as long as nine years. He observed no untoward reactions from niacinamide in several thousand patient-years of continuous use. His recommended intake for treatment of restricted mobility of joints and other manifestations of deficiency of vitamin B3 (aniacinamidosis) is 4 to 5 g per day.

Even before the work of Abram Hoffer and Humphry Osmond on acute schizophrenia, Kaufman had written that many of his patients showed striking improvement in mental health as well as physical health on this niacinamide regimen. I have had the opportunity to check the effectiveness of niacinamide, together with vitamin C, in controlling arthritis in a few patients, with results that support the conclusions stated by Kaufman.

So far as I know, no group of researchers in the field of arthritis has attempted to repeat Kaufman's work. This lack of interest may be the result in part, again, of the general bias of the medical profession against vitamins and in part of the fact that no one can make money from niacinamide, which is just as cheap as vitamin C.

On the same page (204) Pauling goes on to detail the cure or treatment for rheumatism with vitamin B6 or pyridoxine. I may write another hubpage to include this information which is also a cure for carpal tunnel syndrome.

Finally, on page 244 Pauling says this -

Kaufman's work and the observations of many persons show that a gram or more of niacinamide per day has value in controlling arthritis, and Dr Ellis has reported good results with vitamin B6.

Even if I had very severe arthritis, I doubt that I would take Drug X. Instead, I would try niacinamide, 5g or more per day, if necessary, and I would increase my intake of vitamin B6.

Bear in mind that Pauling himself mantained a regimen of many other vitamins including, for example, 20 or more grams of vitamin C daily. Full details of course are in his book.

(I would expect anyone asking questions about Pauling's arthritis cure to at least have read Pauling's book first.)

This cure or treatment for arthritis is recommended by Nobel Prize winning nutritional scientist. Linus Pauling. He lived to a ripe old age and, as far as I know, never suffered from arthritis.

Now, thanks to him, neither should you or I, or my dad.

As I say, there are numerous natural or alternative methods available online for treating anything and everything, including all forms of arthritis. Another one of these arthritis treatments is promoted by a Dr Dahlman and you can watch his short video in this section, and you can visit his website as detailed in the video.

What Dr Dahlman says makes a lot of sense to me, particularly as I have just begun Water Therapy to address various ailments. Because in the video Dr Dahlman claims that most, if not all, cases of arthritis are connected to the gastro intestinal tract. He also mentions the connection of the diseases Chrohns and Colitis being connected to GI tract problems.

Basically, his approach is to fix up the GI tract and see if that doesn't fix up your arthritis. Makes sense to me because I've just discovered Water Therapy - drinking a large amount of water each morning. The claims made for this cheapest of all treatments are amazing. One of the many ailments it cures is arthritis.

I am only one week into my Water Therapy - which I will write about elsewhere - but at age 60 I'm already experiencing a variety of benefits of this natural approach to cleansing the all important gastro intestinal tract.

I did have problems with my knees a few months ago. When I bent my knees they would click and then they began to become painful.

I should mention that at age sixty I continue to lift weights, do some aikido knee-walking occasionally, and a few other things older people aren't supposed to. Only last year my partner and I were out jogging and we ran past some teenage girls on their way to school.

Well, you can see my photo at the top of the page - I didn't think I looked old. And Toni is much younger than I am, and she looks even younger than she is. But one of the girls actually shouted out "Old people should be at home watching television, not running around outside!"

I kid you not. True story. Anyway, the point of this section is to mention that I added Vitamin A&D capsules to my vitamin regimen. Not the el cheapo generic ones from a supermarket but the 1 gram capsules of cod liver oil from our local health food shop. From what i'd read, they were supposed to fix up my arthritic knees.

Well, they didn't. So after a few weeks I returned to the health shop to have a whinge about it. As I stood at the counter I again read the instructions on the bottle. Yes, It said to take 1 capsule daily. I decided to try two per day.

I began to take TWO capsules daily. Within a week the pain and clicking in my knees had gone. Linus Pauling repeats over and over and over again that vitamins and supplements, to be effective, have to be taken in sufficient quantity.

Only the optimum amount of supplement will do the job. When I applied that strategy I got the result that I needed.