By Dr. Mercola
If you or someone you know has rheumatoid arthritis (RA), you'll want to watch this video. In it, Sarah Allen, who is a former patient of mine, shares how she put rheumatoid arthritis into remission, and it's a remarkable success story.
Rheumatoid arthritis was a passion of mine while I was still in active practice. I treated over 3,000 patients with this disease. I estimate 80 to 85 percent of them experienced significant recovery, if not remission, like Sarah did.
I ran into Sarah after giving a presentation recently in Orlando, where she happened to be in attendance. After talking to her, I decided we needed to share her important story as it would provide hope for so many who struggle with this disease.
She first came to see me in August of 2003. Even though she was only 28 years old at the time, she'd been experiencing symptoms of RA for about three or four years.
"I thought I was very healthy,' she says. 'I was young. I was a competitive triathlete. I believed I had a pretty good diet. So, I didn't really understand why I was experiencing so much pain in my fingers and in my feet.
I had migrating pain, and a lot of tendonitis issues all throughout my body. It took the Western doctors a long time to diagnose me. It took about three years going to different doctors before they knew what was wrong.
It didn't show in my blood; I didn't have the RA factor, and my C-reactive protein (CRP) levels were normal. But it showed up on an X-ray.'"
Hallmark Signs of RA
One of the hallmark symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis is pain in your hands and/or feet. It tends to affect the proximal joints more so than the distal ones, i.e. the joints closest to your palm, for example, opposed to the joints further out in the fingers.
So, if you have pain there, especially if it's symmetrical (affecting the same joints on both hands or feet), then almost by definition you have rheumatoid arthritis or an RA variant. It really doesn't matter what the blood work shows.
RA is far less common than osteoarthritis, or degenerative joint disease, which is not as crippling. It's actually easy to treat degenerative arthritis if you understand the components of a healthy lifestyle.
Rheumatoid arthritis is a far more complex disease. It's an autoimmune disease; your body is destroying itself, and it can be terminal — some people have even been known to commit suicide from the crippling pain.
It's quite notable that less than one percent of people with the disease have a spontaneous remission. Some disability occurs in 50 to 70 percent of people within five years after onset of the disease, and half will stop working within 10 years.
RA Is Typically Treated with Toxic Drugs
Traditional care also doesn't have a lot of good hope for RA sufferers. All they do is ameliorate or treat the symptoms — typically using highly toxic drugs, including prednisone, methotrexate, and drugs that interfere with tumor necrosis factor, like Enbrel.
This is why I'm so passionate about spreading this information because as Sarah can attest, there's an alternative, and this drug-free strategy really works. You don't have to suffer needlessly in a conventional treatment model.
Once diagnosed, Sarah went to a well-known rheumatologist in Milwaukee who told her she needed to stop running, or risk becoming permanently disabled. He prescribed a low-dose of methotrexate, which is actually an anti-cancer drug.
While it can be effective, the complications and the side-effects are atrocious. Sarah had to check her liver status every month, and even though she was only on a low dosage for about three months, she started losing some of her hair.
A rheumatology researcher at the Mayo Clinic whom she went to see told her to keep taking the drug, but expect it to shave 15 to 20 years off her life...
"I was really afraid of what that drug was going to do to my body,' Sarah says.'The physical therapist who recommended I get tested for RA said there was a lot I can do naturally. So I read a lot of books about rheumatoid arthritis and different alternative treatments.
I read there's a possibility of it being connected with an infection, and that a low dose of antibiotics was being prescribed. I then came across your name in a book. I looked you up, found you in Chicago, and made an appointment.'"
Dr. Brown's Protocol
The book she's referring to is The Road Back: Rheumatoid Arthritis, its Cause and its Treatment, written by Dr. Thomas McPherson Brown and Henry Scammell. Dr. Brown was a well-respected board-certified rheumatologist (he passed away in 1989), but he was a rebel.
He didn't agree with the use of prednisone, which was the standard of care for RA in the '40s and '50s. He believed RA was an infection caused by mycoplasmas, so he used the antibiotic tetracycline instead.
Eventually, he modified his treatment to more potent discriminating forms of tetracycline, such as minocycline. Dr. Brown ultimately helped bring over 10,000 patients into remission. I first saw his work in a 20/20 special done shortly before he died in 1989, and it really inspired me. I decided to study his work, began using his protocol on RA patients in my practice, and was really impressed with the results. Eventually I modified the protocol to the point where I abandoned antibiotics altogether.
Sarah's Treatment
When I first saw Sarah, we discussed her diet, and I suggested there might be a genetic influence (hereditary) involved as she's Scottish-Irish. Many of her family members also had autoimmune problems, including multiple sclerosis (MS) and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). Her genetic background suggested she may have an intolerance of wheat and gluten. Click here to continue reading.
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