Treating Arthritis by Mark G. Lester EVERYONE is familiar with the increasing pain and loss of joint mobility that characterises arthritis. Mainstream medicine focuses on pain relieving and anti-inflammatory drugs while ignoring the fact that the temporary relief obtained masks the insidious progress of the disease (indeed some of the drugs such as anti inflammatory steroids DIRECTLY speed up the long term deterioration which accompanies this disease). Conventional doctors more or less assume that as we age, we WILL develop arthritis, yet in my clinic I have seen many people diagnosed with this supposedly intractable condition become completely symptom free and for all intents and purposes, cured. The regime I am about to describe is not the cure for arthritis, different things work for different people, however my experience is that providing that I) the patient is a patient patient II) they have a predominantly wholefood vegetarian diet III) the fog of conventional medicines is not so overwhelming as to make healing impossible, then the majority of people can improve beyond recognition and often be cured. Even people who are breaking the three rules above often improve significantly. The first therapy I usually use for arthritis is Electro-Crystal therapy. I will not venture into what this therapy is in detail in this article except to say that this is a treatment that uses electromagnetic frequencies and crystal oscillations to promote healing. I find that alternating between calming frequencies for pain and inflammation, and stimulating frequencies to regenerate the damaged tissues is often very effective. An open minded rheumatologist has found that this regime alone has given more than just pain relief and X-ray scans have shown arthritis to have reversed. In the words of one female patient, who was completely symptom free within 8 sessions, "Electro-Crystal therapy has totally changed the quality of my life". Another patient, actually a musician whose hands were so painful that her career was under threat, is now symptom free. Secondly Ozone therapy. This is a naturopathic method dating back to the 1860's, which works by flooding the body with Oxygen to promote de-toxification. Science has verified the efficacy of Ozone in treating arthritis with Ozone: At the Centre of Medical-Surgical Studies in Havana, sixty patients with osteoarthritis (mostly affecting the knee) were given one interarticular injection of ozone per week for a total of ten weeks. Of the sixty patients, only four experienced the return of painful symptoms after two months, while the majority (93.3%) were symptom free. The researchers concluded that this easily applied and low-cost therapy produced "disappearance of pain after the first several ozone applications, as well as diminished clinical inflammation of the joints and restoration of normal joint movement." Many other papers have been published reporting similar success. My own experience is that ozone is as effective as is suggested both for osteo-arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. I remember the wife of one man who came phoning me up last year to thank me for "giving me a new husband" - and that was after one session! Thirdly bodywork: I usually use Bowen technique rather than massage as it is gentler and in my experience more effective. I have seen Bowen technique give an enormous amount of pain relief for long periods and get crippled people moving again. Bodywork will not cure arthritis, but it is enormously helpful. It can increase range of movement and mobility, reduce pain and stiffness, get the blood and interstitial fluids moving around affected areas, and help to clear away stasis. Bowen technique is a method, which is unique in that it re-sets the body to heal itself. Lastly the diet needs to be vegetarian (the meat eaters diet is far too acidic), and as free of white anything as possible (rice, wheat, sugar etc) with a significant percentage of raw food. Effective supplements include nutritional MSM (I 'lost' one patient of mine as a result of this supplement - she was improving already with my treatment but the MSM left her completely symptom free). Colloidal minerals can also be very effective. In conclusion: most people suffering with arthritis can be greatly helped by many different alternative approaches. Many can be cured. The treatments described in this article are methods that I have seen deliver a great deal of success over the last seven years that I have been in practise. I have come to the conclusion, after seeing many people get better who had been told that their condition was 'irreversible' that contrary to conventional dogmas, that arthritis is not merely manageable with conventional increasing doses of ultimately toxic and ineffectual pain relieving drugs, but curable using non toxic health promoting alternative therapies.