Osteoarthritis – Don’t finish your life in a wheelchair – Part One
February 5, 2015
Osteoarthritis – Don’t finish your life in a wheelchair – Part One
Dear reader,
Over the age of 50 years old, osteoarthritis is the most common joint problems: about 27 million people in America are affected. [1]
It starts one morning when you wake up: you feel stiffness in a finger joint or a sharp pain in your hip, back or knee while you’re walking down the stairs.
Suddenly, some of your favorite dreams for the future are collapsing.
Freedom to travel; playing in the garden with your grandchildren during summer; simple activities like craft hobbies, or taking a walk in your neighborhood without that nagging and annoying pain radiating through your body at every step.
But arthritis can also affect your hip, elbow, wrist, fingers, or spine.
The pain awakes as soon as you press a joint with your finger. Gradually, your joints’ flexibility are reduced. They become red, hot, swollen, and sometimes even distorted. At the slightest change in temperature, your suffering worsen.
Problem: 76% of osteoarthritis sufferers treated with medication judge their pain disabling.
In your cartilage’s depths, a disaster is happening!
When we talk of “crippling pain” for 76% of those treated, it means that drug treatments are not effective anymore.
But there is worse: several studies have shown that painkillers against osteoarthritis are making things worse.
They accelerate cartilage’s breakdown.
The phenomenon is even more vicious because at first, the patient is convinced he/she’s getting better.
He/she does not suspect foul play because drugs temporarily masks the pain. Pain is the way our body tells us there is something wrong going on. Taking pain medicine does not cure the problem, it just hides it. While you may not feel the pain anymore, under it all, the disease keeps on growing.
It’s a dangerous illusion. In cartilage, bones, and tendons depths, a disaster is already happening:
– Doctors in Oslo, Norway, followed 186 patients with hip osteoarthritis. 58 of them were taking a medication against inflammation and pain called Indocin, a nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). After taking X-rays, they found that people taking Indocin suffered a faster hip deterioration than others.
– In Portugal, Dr. Antonio Lopez Vaz, at the Oporto Hospital, studied a group of 48 patients with knee osteoarthritis. He divided the group into two. To the first group, he gave 1.5 g of glucosamine (a natural product of which I’ll talk about later) each day for 8 weeks. To the second group, he gave 1.2 g of ibuprofen (an NSAID).
Initially, those taking ibuprofen saw their pain decrease faster than the other patients. That impression lasted during the first two weeks.
But at the end of eight weeks, not only their pain had started to get worst, it was now “significantly higher” than the group taking “glucosamine” (the natural product).
And that was only the beginning of the nightmare for them.
Bleeding holes in their stomach
Ibuprofen, like other NSAIDs, can be extremely dangerous when taken long term.
Used continuously, NSAIDs can cause internal bleeding from ulcers they create in the wall of the stomach and intestine.
It is a frequent consequence. According to the American College of Gastroenterology, up to 60 percent of the approximately 14 million patients with arthritis who consume NSAIDs regularly will develop side effects related to the drugs. [2]
Osteoarthritis is not like a cold or a broken leg. It’s not a temporary problem. The crucial point is not just to try to relieve your pain for only a few days or a few weeks.
The important thing to remember is that we do not want in six months, 2 years, or 10 years, to end up in a wheelchair, or immobilized in a hospital bed.
Effective and natural solutions against osteoarthritis
Fortunately, there are natural treatments against osteoarthritis without side effects.
Don’t get me wrong, they are no more miracle cures than pharmaceutical drugs but unlike chemical drugs, they:
1. Significantly reduce the risk of pain caused by osteoarthritis;
2. Significantly reduce the risk of sequels associated with osteoarthritis;
3. Can even help regrow our cartilage, a result that no chemical drug can offer. Actually, as you found out above, it can be the reverse. The most commonly used drugs against osteoarthritis, NSAIDs, accelerate the destruction of cartilage.
Here’s how to reverse osteoarthritis
Unlike what most people say or believe, osteoarthritis is neither definitive nor inevitable.
It’s not a disease that always progresses necessarily in the wrong direction. Cartilage does not wear out like car tires.
Things are much more complicated than that. But I’ll try to explain them in a brief and simple way.
As you will soon see, once you understand the true osteoarthritis mechanism, you will understand why there is really is a natural solution that works, based on simple food supplements, that gives you the hope to reverse osteoarthritis.
And I will give you all the relevant details soon.
The real cause of osteoarthritis (recently discovered)
Osteoarthritis is a joint problem that has long been attributed to cartilage wear and tear. Cartilage is the white and slightly elastic substance that covers the ends of our bones, allowing them to slide against each other without painful friction and amortize shocks.
But in the early 2000s, US researchers found that osteoarthritis is not caused by cartilage wear. If that was the case, athletes would be much more affected than the rest of the population. In fact, the opposite is true.
The real origin of the problem is that our cartilage cells are gone crazy.
Normally, our cartilage is constantly renewed. For that, we have these special cells called chondrocytes. They “digest” the old cartilage “bricks” and constantly produce new bricks so that our cartilage stays very thick, very elastic, well-drained, and protects our articulations.
I am sorry to use the scientific word “chondrocyte” but I have to ask you to remember it because I will reuse many times below.
Keep that information in a corner of your memory.
Chondrocytes are the essential cells whose job is to remove your old cartilage and provide you materials to create new one. Thanks to them, your joints may remain flexible and elastic for decades more.
But when our chondrocytes are mistreated, like you and I, they go crazy and you’ll see that the consequences can be terrible.
But before I give you the bad news, I have to tell you how to care for our chondrocytes. This applies even and especially if this disease has already started.
How to take good care of our crazy chondrocytes
To prevent osteoarthritis from happening or getting worst, we need to take good care of your chondrocytes.
For that, you need to:
1. Give them the oxygen and nutrients they need to live and do their job of cartilage regeneration.
2. Protect them from external aggressions. Chondrocytes hate violent blows, like everyone else, and they hate inflammatory substances (cytokines and leukotrienes). Thus, when inflammation settles in your body for a long time due to a food intolerance, obesity, or an unhealthy lifestyle, your chondrocytes may get sick and go crazy.
Feed your chondrocytes well
Start with food. Chondrocytes are located in your cartilage. But cartilage has an interesting peculiarity: it’s not irrigated by blood vessels.
What this means is that the cartilage cells do not receive oxygen or nutrients through your blood like other cells in your body.
Their nourishment is found in the synovial fluid, a liquid that looks like egg white, which surrounds your joints.
To oxygenate and nourish your chondrocytes, we must allow your synovial fluid entry to your cartilage. And for that, you need to move regularly and frequently. That’s because our cartilage is a little spongy. Each time you move, you put pressure on your joints and a bit of synovial fluid circulates in and out. That is how your chondrocytes are fed and oxygenated.
Problems start when:
1. We don’t move enough: TV couch potato, desk job, driving all over the place instead of walking, living a sedentary lifestyle. We do not work our joints hard enough. As a consequence, our chondrocytes lack oxygen and nutrition; they weaken and become ill.
2. We abuse and compress our cartilage too much. Overweight people compress their cartilage too much. Imagine a heavy dictionary sitting on top of a wet sponge. That’s what we’re doing when we carry excess weight. We compress our cartilage which squeezes out and expels the synovial fluid out of joints and chondrocytes suffer a lack of oxygen and nutrition, and turn crazy.
This is why it is important that, in order to prevent osteoarthritis, we make an effort to frequently exercise in moderation and stay as close as possible to our ideal weight.
But we have seen that’s not necessarily enough. We must also avoid blows, shocks and chronic inflammation.
How to protect your chondrocytes from blows and inflammation
Our cartilage is made to “take” high pressure frequently.
We can jump, dance, run without fear of damaging it, quite the contrary. However, our cartilage is not made to be squashed violently. In case we twist our foot or arm during a ski fall, a football or rugby game, a car or motorcycle accident, while biking or rollerblading, the shock can be such that our cartilage is crushed and remains permanently damaged.
There again, our chondrocytes are suffering, can get sick and go crazy. Poor chondrocytes! We should be nicer to them if we want to lead a pain-free later life.
People who had such accidents in their youth (like me: multiple motorcycle falls and accidents) are at high risk of suffering from osteoarthritis. It’s particularly important that we follow the advice against osteoarthritis I offer you. The earlier we start, the better the results will be and as a bonus, we’ll avoid embarrassing pain.
On the other hand, chondrocytes are very vulnerable to inflammatory substances that sickens them. A food intolerance, a weight excess, an unhealthy lifestyle, chronic stress, or any other reason can cause chronic inflammation. Our chondrocytes are suffering and risk of becoming crazy. They seem to be very sensitive fellows.
Keep in mind that, as we age, chondrocytes’ activity also diminish naturally.
All these issues can be serious if we not take care of them early on. They can turn much more serious than the mere temporary pain they cause in the beginning.
The terrible secret of chondrocytes gone berserk
Indeed, a crazy chondrocyte not only stops doing its job.
It starts, like a madman, to:
– Kill other chondrocytes,
– Attack healthy cartilage cells,
– Prevent new cartilage “bricks” from being created and set in place.
This is the terrible truth. Shocking as it may seem, chondrocytes, cells normally programmed to renew cartilage, begin to do the opposite when they get mad: they destroy existing cartilage and prevent new ones from forming.
A vicious circle is then set in place: the worse osteoarthritis gets, the more inflammation they create. And the more inflammation we have, the craziest our chondrocytes become and worsen your osteoarthritis! It seems there is no end to it if we don’t do something quick about it.
Do not make this mistake
You now understand better that the worst mistake you can make is to take pain medicine.
They prevent you from feeling the serious problem happening in your joints. Pain is a warning for us to take action.
But day after day, the unnoticed destruction continues. And the longer we wait, the crazier our chondrocytes become and generate inflammatory substances, accelerating their destructive task!
And brace yourself for more: soon, all the other parts of the joint are attacked. Tendons, bones, synovial fluid itself – which normally lubricates our joints – ignite as a result of inflammatory substances that concentrate daily.
And now comes redness, swelling, and pain that ends up being unbearable and paralyzing.
Osteoarthritis is NOT a trivial problem.
We must do all we can to prevent it or to control it if it started already.
Significant challenges for our future
This is so important for our future that I would like to clarify, using scientific terms, the diabolical gear in motion, and that can have such dire consequences for our future.
Instead of making new cartilage, as they usually do, our crazy chondrocytes:
1. Destroy existing cartilage by secreting metalloproteinases, above and beyond their normal job of getting rid of old cartilage. Even healthy new cells are attacked.
2. Prevent the formation of bricks needed to renew our cartilage; these bricks are collagen and proteoglycans.
3. Attack other parts of our articulations (tendons, bone, and synovial fluid), producing the following aggressive inflammatory substances, leukotrienes and cytokines.
Now that you understand the scientific reasons for it, you realize the crucial importance of a healthy lifestyle, regular but not excessive physical activity; and finally, maintain your ideal weight. We must do all we can to prevent the cycle of inflammation from happening.
And if that process has already begun, then we must:
1. Stop the inflammation with a natural product well tolerated by our body;
2. Bring to our joints the “bricks” that your cartilage chondrocytes have stopped producing.
Our battle plan is now clear! Let’s get into the nitty gritty of what we need to do.
Stop the inflammation in our joints
So, our first step is to put out the fire that started in our joints.
– If we don’t move enough, we need to start regular, low key exercise (walk, yoga, tai chi) to revive the flow of synovial fluid in your cartilage.
– If we carry too much weight, we need to relieve pressure on your joints by losing excess weight. Our first step is to reduce your intake of grains and starchy foods and sweets – all inflammatory foods.
– If our arthritis is triggered because of an accident that affected our joints in the past or because of age, skip to the next step.
The anti-arthritis nutrition plan
Scientific data accumulate about the role of nutrition in inflammation.
To limit our level of inflammation and therefore our risk of osteoarthritis, we need to:
– Eat more fresh fruits and vegetables: They are rich in antioxidants and will help decrease the inflammation caused by free radicals.
– Eat as much as you can the following spices with anti-inflammatory properties: any chance you get, add cloves, rosemary, red pepper, turmeric, cinnamon, ginger, and more to your food. [4]
– Eat more dark leafy greens: Dark leafy greens such as spinach, kale, Swiss chard and collard greens contain the powerful antioxidants, flavonoids, carotenoids, and vitamin C—all of them needed to protect against cellular damage. I suggest you choose organic locally grown veggies that are in season, and consider eating a fair amount of them raw. I prefer high speed blending to juicing so the fibers contain in plants also help your digestive system.
– Eat more fresh garlic and onions (not garlic or onion powder): As a southern Frenchman, I am very familiar with and used to eat fresh garlic in assorted meals. Garlic has been treasured for its medicinal properties for centuries. It’s also one of the most heavily researched plant foods around. Over 170 studies show it benefiting more than 150 different conditions. Garlic gives us the following properties: anti-bacterial, anti-viral, anti-fungal, and as well as antioxidant. Much of garlic’s therapeutic effect comes from allicin, a sulfur-containing compound also contained in onions, such as allicin. As allicin is digested by our body, it produces sulfenic acid, a compound that reacts faster against dangerous free radicals than any other known compound.
– Eat more berries: Berries in general and blueberries in particular rate very high in antioxidant capacity compared to other fruits and vegetables. They are also lower in sugar than many other fruits. Also consider goji berries from China.
– Drink green tea: Matcha tea is the most antioxidant-rich green tea and comes in the form of a ground green powder. Japanese matcha tea is considered the best quality and contains up to 17 times the antioxidants of wild blueberries, and seven times more than dark chocolate. The Indian tulsi tea is another tea loaded with anti-inflammatory antioxidants and other micronutrients that support immune function and heart health.
– Eat more naturally fermented foods: Your gut flora is thought to be 70% of your protective immune system. It helps protect you from chronic inflammation. Since the majority of inflammatory diseases start in your gut when your microbiome becomes imbalanced. I suggest you start eating naturally and traditional (not industrial) foods such as plain yogurt or kefir (fermented dairy), miso, tempeh and natto (fermented soy products), sauerkraut or kimchee (fermented cabbage), pickles and cornichons, olives, and others that will help ‘repopulate’ your gut with beneficial bacteria. They can also help your body rid itself of harmful toxins such as heavy metals and pesticides that promote inflammation.
– Eat shiitake and maitake mushrooms: These Oriental offer compounds with the natural ability to inhibit inflammation, such as ergothioneine, which inhibits oxidative stress. They also contain a number of unique nutrients that we usually do not get enough of in our diet. Copper, which is one of the few metallic elements accompanied by amino and fatty acids that are essential to human health. Since our body can’t synthesize copper, our diet must supply it regularly. Copper deficiency can be a factor in the development of coronary heart disease.
– Increase your intake of healthy omega-3 fatty acids: olive and coconut oils, flaxseed, cod liver oil, fish oil, fresh salmon, tuna, mackerel, and fresh or canned sardines. Reduce your intake of omega-6 (corn, soy, canola, grape and sunflower oils and margarine; anything corn and more). Omega-3 are anti-inflammatory while omega-6 are pro-inflammatory. Note that the omega-3 from fish oil are not only anti-inflammatory, they also block any substances, called aggrecanases that digest cartilage. [5]
More to come next week in part two…
A Votre Sante – To Your Health
Chef Alain Braux
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Sources :
[2] Aspirin, Ibuprofen, and Intestinal Disorders
[3] Matrix metalloproteinases and aggrecanases
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