The Barnard Observer
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Home Picks Figures Great Investors Vault Misc Contact c2003-06 Thomas Barnard
[Disclaimer: I have found the information below largely on the internet. I make mistakes, so do your own research before changing your habits.]
[a work in progress]
Aix-Les-Pains
(Aches and Pains)
“Aix-les-Pains” was the clever
way James Joyce connected to a central problem the large part of humanity suffers
by making it a location in southern
I acquired this condition from dancing tango one night in December. I came home and went to bed. Threw a mess of covers on, and was too warm, so I threw them off. In the morning, I had a tightness in my upper butt. The piriformis muscle extends from the spinal column over to the hip joint. Needless to say, it was very painful. I couldn’t walk 2 blocks to the post office without bending over half-a-dozen times to try and stretch the muscle. I would take 12 ibuprofen tablets a day, and they didn’t seem to help much.
Like all people suffering with this kind of pain, I looked for solutions. I tried a chiropractor without luck. I never did see how cracking my spine was going to solve the muscle problem in my butt. I believe in the helpfulness of superior nutrition, but pills don’t always solve the problem. I tried acupuncture for 8 weeks. I tried many therapies. Nothing seemed to work.
What solved this problem was something called prolotherapy. My doctor stuck me in 48 places with a needle filled with dextrose, pitcher’s plant, and lidocaine. The idea was to inject supernutrition directly into the part affected. One visit did the trick. I would get just a little better each day, and 2 months later I was 98% cured. As always there are confounding variables, and the weather was getting warming as I was getting better, and I think this contributed to the cure. I can still feel a little residual pain in that area. I know that I must keep the area warm, and I must stretch it. But my doctor strongly recommends nutritional supplements to aid the healing process, many of those listed below.
I also had another problem also stemming from tango. Pain in my knees. After a night of tango I would come home with my knees burning. I would have to ice them down for an hour. I read about glucosamine, and I tried a supplement with glucosamine, chondroitin, and MSM. After perhaps a month, that pain just went away. This is perhaps the most striking example I have ever had of the power of supplements.
Below are listed some supplements which may aid in the cause against joint pain:
Glucomsamine
and Chondroitin Sulfate
Glucosamine is an amino
sugar that the body produces and distributes in cartilage and other connective
tissue, and chondroitin sulfate is a complex carbohydrate that helps cartilage
retain water. A study has been completed
that tested glucosamine and chondroitin versus Celebrex (celecoxib), it was
called the NIH
Glucosamine/Chondroitin Arthritis Intervention Trial (GAIT).
“Participants
taking the positive control, celecoxib, experienced statistically significant pain
relief versus placebo--about 70 percent of those taking celecoxib had a 20
percent or greater reduction in pain versus about 60 percent for placebo. Other than that, “there were no significant
differences between the other treatments tested and placebo.”[1]
Glucosamine
and chondroitin did have some effect for a smaller group of participants within
the whole group. “For
a subset of participants with moderate-to-severe pain, glucosamine combined with
chondroitin sulfate provided statistically significant pain relief compared to
placebo--about 79 percent had a 20 percent or greater reduction in pain versus
about 54 percent for placebo. According to the researchers, because of the
small size of this subgroup these findings should be considered preliminary and
need to be confirmed in further studies.”[2]
What
I take away from this is that placebo effect is a powerful one. Also, that Celebrex helps a little, and in
some cases, so do glucosamine and chondroitin.
Since glucosamine and chondroitin are clearly involved in joint
maintenance, I will continue to make them a part of my regimen.
MSM
methylsulfonylmethane
The mother compound for this is DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide), which was used
as an industrial solvent. Dr. Stanley
Jacob, a surgeon trained at Harvard, found accidentally that it was a good
substance for storing organs for transplant.
DMSO had some downside: it caused a bad taste in the mouth and it
smelled like garlic or oysters. Further,
there was concern that its ability as a solvent meant that it could carry
anything, including toxins, across cell membranes.
Jacob found that about 15% of DMSO breaks down
into another compound called MSM. It is
a sulfur compound found in fresh fruits and vegetables, milk, fish and grains,
but destroyed in processing. So
apparently, it is safe enough.
There
have been important testimonials from actors like James Coburn and Robert Culp,
which have affected its popularity, but no human studies. Mice studies seemed to indicate that it eased
rheumatoid arthritis symptoms.[3]
It is part of my regimen, though the evidence is far from overwhelming.
SAMe S-adenosylmethionine
A
study was published in the British Journal of Rheumatology, in which
researchers demonstrated for the first time that S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe)
reverses the effects of a deleterious cytokine in synovial cells. And damage
caused by tumor necrosis factor (TNF) was reversed when SAMe was added to cells
at the same time as TNF.[4]
A study coming out of the
My supplement for these
things
The supplement I buy contains all of these things, which I get from Puritan’s Pride:
http://www.puritan.com/pages/file.asp?xs=C8CF9D306ABA43D5933F7914FC621511&PID=5329&CID=45
I have not had the product assayed. I hope the stuff they claim is in there is in there.
My grandmother suffered osteoarthritis for the last 45 years of her life. She was in such pain my mother reports she had to beg off going to my mother’s high school graduation. There is another substance osteoarthritis suffers and rheumatoid arthritis sufferers might want to look into: cetyl myristoleate.
A scientist, Harry W. Diehl, discovered this substance while moonlighting at the National Institute of Arthritis, Metabolism, and Digestive Diseases by grinding up mouse joints. Because mice cannot seem to acquire arthritis, he figured something must be protecting them. By his reckoning, that something was a fatty acid ester called cetyl myristoleate. He got a use patent for it for rheumatoid arthritis. Here’s a link to the interesting story behind it:
http://www.tldp.com/issue/168/168cetyl.html
I don’t know so many places to buy this stuff, but here is one place you can buy this product:
http://www.bcn4life.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=BCN&Product_Code=LS-CM-CMR1K
Ibuprofen is a sufficient aid to many suffers of arthritis, but for those, who have stomach problems with it, or are looking to take more, but can’t, here are some avenues to explore:
http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/health/HealthRepublish_1449091.htm
Take Your Antioxidants
According to LEF
Magazine, “Researchers in the
Many will use these suggestions to avoid dealing with “big” problem of old age – putting on the pounds. It is a clear calculation that most of the weight that is added in middle age comes above the hips. How many people have you seen who have big bellies and stork-like legs?
The hard work of dieting is not to order and take some supplements. The hard work is to lose the weight that is bearing down on the knees and hips.
If the weight is lost, the supplements are taken, then there is one more thing that can make a huge difference – exercise.
The role of exercise was brought home to me in a documentary I viewed on the Discovery/New York Times Channel entitled “Breaking Down Back Pain.” I highly recommend viewing this video if you have the chance. One segment told the story of Sam Ho M.D., who is the medical director of Pacificare.
Ho reported his condition at the time, “I could barely walk. I couldn’t stand straight. I couldn’t walk straight…
“I saw the neurosurgeon. He looked at MRI. He examined me. He spent a few minutes with me, and he immediately recommended surgery.
“So finally I asked him: ‘What is your experience with this surgery? How many have you done? What is your success rate?’
“He looked incredulous. He said, ‘Why would I ever keep that information?’
“To which I answered, ‘Because it’s my back you’ll be operating on.’”
Nevertheless, a surgery date was set a few months out. In the meantime, Dr. Ho went to his local bookstore and started to look into exercise as a means of dealing with the condition. He began an exercise regime, and reported the results:
“I was having less pain, and more flexibility with each passing day. Within a few weeks I had a total recovery.
“I mean: the disc is still in my spinal canal. It’s still extruded. It doesn’t go back in. But by strengthing my core muscles – my back, my abs, and practicing flexibility and so forth, I have no back pain. Haven’t had any back pain the last three and a half years, and without surgery and without medication. Just exercise.”
If you can resolve your back pain without the benefit of supplements, without medication, and especially without surgery, I am all for that. My solution is more comprehensive, which is, to do everything you can do without harming yourself. As far as I know the supplements will not to you any harm, nor sensible dieting, nor exercise. Why not do them all?
2006 Sept 2
[1] http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/gait/qa.htm#b2
[2] http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/gait/qa.htm#b2
[3] http://www.arthritis.org/resources/arthritistoday/1999_archives/1999_11_12explorations.asp
[4] http://rheumatology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/full/40/9/965
[5] http://www.jfponline.com/toc.asp?FID=179&issue=May%202002&folder_description=May%202002%20(Vol.%2051,%20No.%205)
[6] http://www.lef.org/magazine/mag97/sept97-report.html http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8835294&dopt=Abstract