Diet Therapy
- Remove all inflammatory causes from your diet. Dairy products, wheat, and nightshade plants, including potatoes, peppers, eggplant, tomatoes, and tobacco, are most often responsible for these food allergies. Eliminate all the suspect foods from your diet for at least one month. If this is helping with your arthritis, gradually reintroduce them (one new food every three to four days). This way you can determine which specific food is contributing to your arthritis.
- Remove or decrease consumption of all animal products other than fish. If possible, eat a raw food vegetarian diet (vegetarian plus elimination of all animal products, especially dairy).
- Periodic supervised fasting is also very effective for osteoarthritis. For more than 50 years, fasting clinics throughout Europe have successfully employed periodic juice fasting for managing arthritis. Fasting enhances the eliminative and cleansing capacity of the lungs, skin, liver, and kidneys. It also rests and restores the digestive system and helps to relax the nervous system and mind.
- Besides green vegetables, your diet should include: carrots, avocado, sea weeds, spirulina, barley and wheat grass products, sprouts, pecans, soy products, whole grains (such as brown rice, millet, oats, wheat, and barley), seeds (sesame, flax, and pumpkin), and cold-water fish (such as salmon, sardines, herring, and tuna).
- Avoid the following foods: alcohol, coffee, sugar, saturated fat, hydrogenated fat (margarine), excess salt, spinach, cranberries, plums, buckwheat, nuts.
- Weight reduction, through diet and exercise, is also recommended in treating arthritis.
Vitamins, Minerals, and Supplements
Vitamin C, 1,000 to 6,000 mg daily - essential for collagen synthesis and connective tissue repair
Vitamin A, 10,000 to 25,000 I.U. daily
Vitamin E, 400 to 1,200 I.U. daily - inhibits enzymes that break down cartilage
Vitamin B-complex (especially B-6), 50 mg daily
Proanthocyanidin (grape seed extract or pycnogenol) - 100 to 300 mg daily - a strong anti-inflammatory
Zinc picolinate - 30 to 50 mg daily
Selenium - 200 mcg
Copper aspirinate - 2 mg
Calcium - 1,000 mg
Magnesium - 400 to 800 mg
Manganese - 10 to 20 mg
Boron - 6 to 9 mg - improves the symptoms of arthritis.
Glucosamine sulfate - 1,000 mg three times daily for 12 weeks, followed by a maintenance dosage of 500 mg three times daily. Glucosamine is a building block of cartilage and is useful in the repair of damaged cartilage or to grow new cartilage. A multitude of studies (nearly three hundred, including 20 double-blind studies) have shown that glucosamine can relieve the pain of osteoarthritis. It usually takes four to eight weeks to get significant benefit from glucosamine.
Niacinamide (Vitamin B-3) 500 mg four times daily - beneficial in treating arthritis.
Methionine, 250 mg - 4 times/day - an amino acid needed for cartilage formation, has been shown in some studies to be more effective than ibuprofen in treating osteoarthritis.
Essential fatty acids in the form of omega-6 oils, such as evening primrose oil, black currant seed oil, and borage oil; and omega-3 oils from cold-water fish (salmon, sardines, and tuna) and flaxseed oil have been effective in treating arthritis. Flaxseed oil should be taken in a dosage of two tablespoons daily, and is better absorbed if taken with a small amount of cottage cheese. The best omega 3 and 6 combination is EPA (1,000 mg)/DHA (500 mg) or any 2:1 combination of EPA:DHA.
Bovine cartilage and supplements containing chondroitin sulfate may be helpful.
S-adenosylmethionine (SAMe) has been successful for the past twenty years in treating arthritis in Europe.