I just don't understand modern medicine

I was watching an interview yesterday with a doc on the side of the drug companies that make vaccines. He was responding to the recent ruling where the feds admit that vaccines aggravated autism.

He said that there was no proof that vaccines caused autism. The interviewer asked him if there was proof that vaccines did not cause autism. He was taken aback and it appeared in his mind that just because the proof of a cause was lacking that it meant that it proved that vaccines did not cause autism.

Until recently there has been no proof that food allergies cause rhematoid arthritis so the docs have insisted that there is no link despite thousands of anecdotal cases of people with RA going into complete remission once they took their food allergens out of their diets.

A small new study has just been published that shows that docs have been looking in the wrong place for the connection between food allergens and RA. Before, they always looked in the blood, this study found that “the intestinal fluid of
people with RA had higher levels of antibodies to proteins from
cow's milk, cereal, hen's eggs, codfish and pork than that of people
without RA.”

It’s early days still and more research has to be done, but it is good to see that medicine is finally catching up with what some people with RA have known for years.

I am always amazed at how rheumatologists are quick to give their patients truly dangerous drugs, drugs that have horrendous side effects and at the same time, they refuse to countenance the idea that simple dietary changes might make a difference. I often think that I have completely misunderstood that old maxim that is always quoted, “First do no harm”.

Last July, I was in agony. I could barely walk on my feet, they hurt so badly. My hands were so weak and painful that I couldn’t open jars and I struggled to cut with knives. My fingers were turning into claws.

I saw a rheumatologist and he wanted to put me onto methotrexate. I refused and said that I was going to try dietary intervention first and then if that didn’t work, I would consider his drugs.

I went to a wonderful nutritional doc, Dr Joel Fuhrman for treatment. Dr F. is the author of many books, the most well known being Eat to Live. I had been following his Eat to Live plan for about a year at that time and had successfully brought my BP down from 170/150 to around 90/60,

Dr F put me on a boot camp version of his Eat to Live plan. I cut back on the fruits, increased the leafy greens and in particular the more bitter of the cruciferous veg, upped my fish oil to 9g a day, stopped eating my beloved sprouts and became consistent about taking a probiotic daily. (that’s a very abridged version of the plan. Email me if you want more details).

Within weeks all my pain had disappeared and I my hands were useful again. I still have some deformity in two fingers but other than that, there is no evidence of what I looked like less than a year ago.

Last month, before I had my knee surgery, I had my inflammatory markers checked. Every marker is at a perfect level, there is no evidence of inflammation anywhere in my body.

I can’t but wonder what my life would have been like if I had done as the rheumie had suggested and started on Methotrexate. I would be worrying about cancers, would fee like shitl and if the people I have spoken to who take the drug are anything to go by, the disease would not have reversed. Here I am, I did not pay a single penny on drugs, just changed the way I ate and I have never been healthier in my life.