Herbal Health

No specific germ has ever been isolated that is responsible for either osteo- or rheumatoid arthritis. So, unfortunately, the popular germ-killer known as penicillin is of no aid to arthritis.
In penicillin there is not one drop of oil to arrest a squeaking joint. It would be wonderful if arthritics could walk into a doctor’s office, receive a beneficial injection of 100,000 units of penicillin, and stay cured, but it’s impossible. With penicillin, or any other antibiotic on the market today.
There are, and probably always will be, a few doctors who will try injecting vaccine. The vaccines themselves are of two kinds, autogenous and stock synthesised. Autogenous means self-originating. Autogenous vaccines are vaccines made from bacteria already inside the patient’s body during fevers or inflammation. Stock vaccines are created in laboratory test-tubes. The theory is that if you inject bacteria from one disease (like typhoid) and cause an abnormally high fever, when the fever recedes it may take away your arthritis, too.
Doctors begin by giving small doses of 10,000,000 micro-organisms, then lead up to 2,000,000,000 organisms. A violent body reaction results. Some of the better-known vaccines are Coley’s, Crome’s typhoid, a non-specific protein vaccine like sulphur, and a bee-venom preparation named apiolan. Even the doctors who used vaccine therapy soon saw its limitations. The fever caused was sometimes worse than the arthritis.
Still another injection experiment involved arsenic salts. Today we hear little of arsenic being used as a drug in the treatment of arthritis. Yet, because a limited number of arthritics thought they felt better temporarily, arsenic was known and used for a time as a blood stimulator. We could delve into a dozen other drugs like strychnine, quinine, nitrates and bromides. All have been tried out on the arthritic and all have failed.
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Since much of this article will concern diets, food and eating habits, it might be wise for all of us to remember exactly how our digestive system works. Most of us had biology lessons in school, but we may be “rusty” or may have forgotten just what happens to a piece of food when we eat it.
To refresh our minds, let’s trace the course of food from the moment we swallow it . . . how it is broken down by our digestive juices, and where it goes. . . .
First, we chew our food, masticate it in our mouth. Here, simple starches and sugars are acted upon by our salivary juices. Then the food enters our esophagus, the pipe line from the throat to the stomach. Immediately the stomach begins digestive action. Foods are broken down into minute particles and mixed with the stomach juices.
Next, these particles are driven down toward the region of the small intestine. The digestive action on food in the stomach continues from three to five hours, until the food reaches a semi-liquid stage and the stomach becomes completely empty. There is no digestive action whatsoever on oil or fat in the stomach. The heat in the stomach merely changes the fat to oil.
At the end of the stomach, nature has provided a strainer-like valve which permits only semi-fluid materials to pass into the small intestine. This section of the small intestine is known as the duodenum. The passage of fatty or oily food substances through the duodenal region stimulates the action of the liver and the pancreas. The flow of bile and pancreatic juices begins.
Fat or oil which reaches the duodenum is emulsified by the bile salts. It is reduced to microscopic droplets. The useful food is now ready for absorption into the blood. (The non-useful residue is ready to be passed on through the large intestine and out of our bodies.)
Products like amino acids from protein, glucose from carbohydrates, minerals, and vitamins and oils are now transferred to some finger-like outlets in the walls of the small intestine. Everything except the oils must now go into the blood on the same route—they must pass through a pipe line known as the “portal vein.” From the portal vein the foods go into the liver, for use by the body or for storage.
But let’s go back and look at the oils, where we left them in the small intestine. When the oil droplets reached the finger-like outlets in the intestinal wall, they had their choice of two routes to enter our body. They can be collected by a trunk line known as the “lymphatic system” and shuttled around the liver, or they, too, can take the portal route.
Arthritics should get their oils to by-pass the liver … so the oils can continue on to the joints and do their lubricating job!
Now, because of this chapter, we know why all arthritics need more oils—to save their cartilages and joint linings. Some readers might say: “I have been eating oil-bearing food for years—yet I still have arthritis. Why?” Because you have probably been making other dietary mistakes. As the next chapter will show. . . .
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