Arthritis- by Andrew Saul

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califpacific

Thu Oct 25, 2001 11:56 pm

arthritus

 

by Andrew Saul..

 

 

If Dracula were an old woman, he would have sounded a lot like Mrs.

Kelremor. But

there was no other physical resemblance. Just shy

of eighty, this middle-European

immigrant lady had been a housekeeper for decades.

Overweight, bent over, worn out

and weighted down with cares, she came to see me

primarily because of osteoarthritis.

 

It was the 1980's: disco was still considered

music, and arthritis was still said to have no

nutritional connection or cure. For centuries,

quacks have known otherwise. Today,

more and more, the medical profession is finally

catching on. But Mrs. Kelremor had

waited long enough. She said to me, in her thick

Transylvanian accent:

 

" I can't vork. I can't svleep. I om in pain all

oof da time. "

 

I vill now drop the accent; you get the picture.

 

Mrs. Kelremor bowed her curly, gray-haired head as

she continued speaking.

 

" Look at my hands. I can't close them anymore.

Look at my knees, all swollen. I am

sore all over. "

 

As if that were not enough, she showed me an

assortment of lumps on her arms and

legs. Her medico had told her they were benign.

They certainly were not pleasant to

behold.

 

" What can I do? " she said. " My husband does not

work. I have to work. I have to clean. "

 

I said that she might want to try a real dietary

overhaul, beginning with vegetable juice

fasting. There is a fine line between irresponsible

promises and stimulating

encouragement. I attempted to straddle that line by

telling her that she had little to risk

with vegetables.

 

She looked up, for the first time during the

interview, and slowly said, " I will try anything. "

 

Anything? Even living on raw vegetable juices eight

days in a row, followed by a very

light eating for three days, and a raw-food diet for

the next ten?

 

" Yes, " she said. " Anything. "

 

The drop-out rate in such a program is high. That

is probably the only true drawback of

such an otherwise venerable, simple and safe

program. To many, juice fasting conjures

up images of starvation, electrolyte imbalance,

malnutrition and exhaustion. All false, and

for very elementary reasons.

 

Firstly, vegetables are especially nourishing

foods, and a variety of vegetables

guarantees more than adequate nutrition. The fact

that they are juiced does not change

that. Secondly, you cannot hurt yourself with

produce. There is no down side to a

vegetable diet, particularly when accompanied with a

couple of good multivitamin pills

each day. Thirdly, look at the animal kingdom.

Elephants are huge and muscular, with

bones like tree trunks. They eat leaves and roots

and shoots. The clearly get enough

protein and calcium. So will you. In America,

100,000 cows are slaughtered every day.

Their meat is a good source of vitamin B-12, among

other things. So in self-righteous

panic, dietitians scream that you need to eat animal

products, especially meat, to get

B-12! Really? Where did the cow get her B-12, hmm?

She only eats grains and

grasses.

 

So adequate nutrition, really far more than

adequate nutrition, can be maintained for

weeks at a time on veggies alone. " But why juice?

Why not just eat the vegetables? "

Because you won't, that's why. Juicing guarantees

quantity. If you juice, you simply will

consume more vegetables. It is quicker and easier

to down the juice than to sit and

munch, so you will consume more. Additionally, the

absorption of juiced vegetables is

excellent, far superior to what you can get after

just using your choppers to chew. Not

being ruminants, like cows or giraffes, we get only

one chance to masticate our food. A

juicer does the job vastly better.

 

So that's it, then. A safe therapy that is too

simple to work.

 

But it does. And the wretchedly bent-over Mrs.

Kelremor was willing to try it.

 

Not without a fight, however. For weeks, I got her

phone calls. " Can I have soup? "

Sure, if it will please you. " Can I have some

sausage? " No. " Can I cook some of the

vegetables? " Some vegetables have to be cooked,

such as sweet potatoes, and

moving away from a strict meaning of the word

vegetable, lima beans and rice. If some

of these foods will keep a person on the program,

fine. Vegetable juices should still be

the focus and the bulk of every meal.

 

 

" Every meal? " you, and Mrs. Kelremor would say.

" Even breakfast? "

 

Look, folks: For breakfast, we drink hot bean

extract and eat undeveloped bird embryos

and the ripened ovaries of trees. We eat the

muscles of ground up dead pigs placed

between pulverized seeds fermented with a fungus,

with a slice of curdled cow breast

milk. And if I suggest vegetable juices, I'm the

oddball?

 

So I conceded this and that to insure her

compliance. Don't sweat the small stuff. After

nearly a quarter-century as a quack, I know people.

 

Mrs. Kelremor's calls persisted, at various times

of the day. At least I knew she was on

the program. Over time, they were fewer and fewer.

She seemed to be doing fine.

 

A year passed.

 

One day I was shopping in a friend's health food

store. There were a few people at the

check-out counter. One was a tallish lady, or if

not tall, she certainly had very good

posture.

 

" Remember me? " she said, with the unmistakable

voice of Bela Legosi on estrogen.

 

I recalled only the voice. It did not match this

graceful woman, at ease and smiling,

buying a counter full of vitamins. But it was Mrs.

Kelremor.

 

I greeted her, and she wasted no time in telling

me:

 

" I can work. I can bend, and reach, and sit and

stand, and walk without any pain. I can

work! I feel like a new woman. "

 

She actually said something more like, " I veel loke

new voman, " but enough of that.

 

I couldn't help but notice that the lumps on her

arms and legs were gone. It wasn't

surgery; a year and a half of juicing had apparently

eradicated them. Now that was a bit

unexpected.

 

And all this progress, past age 80. I saw

something similar with a woman half her age.

 

The early forties is a bit young for rheumatoid

arthritis, especially arthritis as severe as

Cynthia's. Mostly I remember her hands. They were

an old lady's hands on a

middle-aged woman's body. Swollen knuckles, fingers

tightly drawn together to a point,

almost like a paintbrush. Cynthia could hardly move

them, and never without pain. The

doctors, and there had been many, had all told her

that there was nothing that could be

done. Well, pain killers, but nothing else. Diet,

perhaps? she'd asked them. Of course

not, they'd told her.

 

She disbelieved them just enough to come and see

me.

 

I suggested that she do the same thing as Mrs. K.

had done, and hope for the same

results.

 

" And you are so much younger than her, " I added.

" Perhaps you have an advantage

there. "

 

At the very least, she complained a lot less. I

had just one or two conversations with her

on the phone over the next many months.

 

It was about eighteen months later when I actually

saw Cynthia again in person. She had

scheduled a follow-up appointment and breezed

through the door into my office.

 

" Hi! " she said.

 

" Hello! " I answered. But who are you? is what I

thought. Now I do not have a good head

for names or faces to begin with, but this was

extraordinary. I really thought there had

been a mistake. I had gotten my appointment book

messed up. This could not be

Cynthia. I was expecting someone else, someone with

at least some signs of arthritis.

This woman had none.

 

" Look! " she said. " Look what I can do! "

 

She flexed and turned her wrists and opened and

closed all her fingers, effortlessly. I'm

no orthopedist, but anyone could see that there was

nearly complete range of motion.

 

" Wow! " I said. " What have you been doing? "

 

She looked at me as if I asked an odd question.

 

" What we talked about, " she answered. " I've been

juicing every day, and fasting on

juices every other week. For the last year and a

half! And look at my complexion! "

 

Cynthia, or whoever this person really was, had

almost no wrinkles. Her skin tone was

perfect, perhaps a bit on the carotene-orange side.

USA Today has described this

harmless mega-juicing side effect as looking like

" an artificial sun tan. " True. The

doctors' Merck Manual describes hypercarotenosis

" harmless. " Also true.

 

I describe it as " effective. " There is more to

juicing than just carotenes. The complex

carbohydrates, raw food enzymes, organic minerals

and vitamins, soluble fibers, and

other vegetable nutrients makes for the perfect

antidote to the protein-dominated, fat-

heavy, sugar-laden arthritis-causing Standard

American Diet.

 

Once, my own mother had arthritis. She was just

entering her sixties. The symptoms

were not severe, but they were getting worse each

year. She started taking vitamins,

juicing, and most notably, eating lentil sprouts.

 

Mom is a unique person, a " strange bird " as our old

hardware-store man used to say.

She will stick to an idea, even an untenable one,

for a long time. This time, her talents for

stubbornness were put to good use.

 

Every morning, Mom would have a large bowlful of

sprouted lentils. Lentils look like

brown split peas. To sprout them, she would soak

dry lentils overnight in tap water. The

next morning, she'd pour off the soaking water,

rinse and drain them. Later that day,

she'd rinse and drain the lentils once more. They

were ready for breakfast the next day.

This may already sound pretty funky, but she went

one step further: she topped them with

molasses, and ate them with a spoon.

 

Yum.

 

Now where does an otherwise intelligent person pick

up ideas like this?

 

Guilty. Yes, I was the culprit.

 

I will stand on the results, though. It was

considerably less than a year and my mom had

no trace of arthritis. And this may be the really

good news: she eventually discontinued

the lentil meal, and also the moderate (one glass

per day) juicing she was doing. She

still continues to take her vitamins to this day.

 

I know this lady and her hands especially well.

The raw sprout program worked. Juicing

worked for Cynthia and Mrs. Kelremor. It all sounds

quacky, because it is.

 

But that's how arthritis was eradicated from three

sets of hands.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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