Arthritis be gone!: a doctor's Rx for easy, safe, inexpensive--and effective--treatments for your arthritis pain

490 Pages·1997·2.17 MB·English

by  John B. Irwin

Arthritis Be Gone! : A Doctor's Rx for Easy,
title: Safe, Inexpensive--and Effective--
treatments for Your Arthritis Pain
author: Irwin, John B.
publisher: NTC Contemporary
isbn10 | asin: 0879838043
print isbn13: 9780879838041
ebook isbn13: 9780071401753
language: English
Arthritis--Popular works, Arthritis--
subject Treatment, Arthritis--therapy--Popular
Works.
publication date: 1997
lcc: RC933.I78 1997eb
ddc: 616.7/22
Arthritis--Popular works, Arthritis--
subject: Treatment, Arthritis--therapy--Popular
Works.
Page iii
Arthritis Begone!
A Doctor's R for Easy, Safe
Inexpensiveand EffectiveTreatments
for Your Arthritis Pain
John B. Irwin, M.D.
Keats Publishing, Inc.
New Canaan, Connecticut
Page iv
Arthritis Begone! is intended solely as information and education, and
not as medical advice. Please consult a medical or health professional
if you have questions about your health.
ARTHRITIS BEGONE! Copyright © 1997 by John B. Irwin All
Rights Reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without the
written consent of the publisher.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Irwin, John B.
Arthritis begone! : a doctor's R for easy, safe, inexpensive
and effectivetreatments for your arthritis pain/John B. Irwin.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-87983-804-3
1. ArthritisPopular works. 2. ArthritisTreatment. I. Title.
RC933.I78 1997
616.7'22dc21 97-25611
CIP
Printed in the United States of America
Keats Publishing, Inc. 27 Pine Street (Box 876) New Canaan,
Connecticut 06840-0876
Keats Publishing website address: www.keats.com
Page v
Contents
1. Getting Better: An Introduction to Living With Arthritis 1
2. Some Basic Features of Arthritis: One Disease with 13
Many Faces
3. Know Your Enemy: Keeping Your Daily Pain Score 29
4. Food and Arthritis: The Odd Coupling 37
5. Food Supplements in Arthritis: Special Helpmates to 58
Meet Special Demands
6. The Gynecological Connection: Women's Unique 80
Vulnerability to Some Forms of Arthritis
7. Steroid Hormones in Arthritis: The Mighty Messengers 95
of Pain Relief
8. Spironolactone: The Diuretic With a Difference 112
9. Gout, Gouty Arthritis and Pseudo-gout: It Ain't What It 123
Used to Be
Page vi
10. Sneak Attack: Infectious Agents as a Sometime Factor 141
in Arthritis
11. Management of Painless Osteoarthritis: A Vanity 153
Affair
12. Mind-talk: Improving Your Internal Dialogue to 158
Combat Stress-Induced Arthritis
13. The Role of Physical Therapy and Exercise in 179
Arthritis: You Cannot Run Arthritis Out of Town!
14. United We Stand: Combinations of Therapy for Best 187
Results
15. Manipulating the Immune System: Are NSAIDs 198
Appropriate?
16. "Ring Out the Old . . . Ring In the New" The NSAIDs 209
Cause the Ringing!
Appendices A. Gynecic Tissues: The Cyclic Paralysis and 217
Anesthesia Syndrome
Appendices B. Table of Food Classifications 233
Appendices C. Microdose Prednisone Treatment 235
Appendices D. Pain Score Chart and Guide 239
Bibliography 247
Index 253

Page 1
1
Getting Better
An Introduction to Living with Arthritis
Are you one of the 38,000,000 or more Americans who are suffering
from some form of arthritis? Are you among the multitude of patients
who have spent a fortune on arthritis treatments without experiencing
any significant relief? Would you be interested in alternative measures
that are highly effective at much less cost and with essentially no
danger? If your answer is "Yes!" to any of these questions, read on.
This book will teach you in simple laymen's terms what arthritis is all
about and how you can manage your own arthritis condition, using
my innovative and well-tested system. No other book or program
exists that can give you the same unified information, or the same
realistic hopes for marked arthritis relief.
Let me say at the outset that I am not a specialist in rheumatology, the
area of medicine devoted to arthritis and the more than 100
inflammatory diseases of joints and soft tissues that this term
encompasses. I am, rather, a board-certified obstetrician-gynecologist
who has practiced as a physician-surgeon for over 40 years. Despite
being technically an outsider when it comes to arthritis, I became
Page 2
extremely interested in rheumatic diseases beginning about thirty
years ago as the direct result of the gradual worsening of my own
arthritis condition. My interest as a physician was further stimulated
when I began to notice that some of my gynecological patients,
coincident with undergoing hormone replacement therapy during
menopause, experienced a significant improvement in arthritis
symptoms. Stiffness, pain and swelling were all reduced; sometimes,
they disappeared altogether! This suggested to me that there might be
some cause-and-effect clues to arthritis that were currently being over-
looked and might be worth further exploration. I began to delve more
extensively in medical libraries to see if anyone else was following
the same clues. What I found surprised me. No one had paid attention
to what were, in my mind, certain obvious causes and effects in
arthritis. Indeed, when I compared my own experiences with what was
written, I found a lot of "expert knowledge" to be, frankly, wrong or
incomplete.
Over time, I have developed new and admittedly unorthodox
hypotheses about the nature and causes of the diseases known broadly
as arthritis. From these hypotheses have evolved a number of
successful treatment approaches that are simple as they are safe. In
many cases, you can adopt them without a physician's prescription
because they involve such self-determined changes as altering the
foods you eat and the kinds of exercises you follow. Perhaps their
ultra-simplicity is one factor in physicians' resistance to trying them
on patients in their own practices: "How could anything so simple be
the answer to a disease so complex?" they seemed to be saying. But
then, professional resistance to virtually all forms of alternative
medicine today is massive! Recognizing these obstacles, but
convinced that I can help many to help themselves, I have decided to
go directly to you, the public, with my treatment, and let you judge for
yourself through your own knowledge and experience.
Many of you will be familiar with Dr. Jason Theodosakis's very
popular book The Arthritis Cure, and wonder if this work isn't more of
the same. It is not. Like me, Dr. Theodosakis was severely afflicted
with arthritis and threw himself into a highly motivated search for an
alternative to the standard treatment. And, like me, he discovered
something that restored him to normal health and activity. For him it
was a course of treatment with several components, based on