"The term arthritis is the conjunction of two words. The first part of the word "arth" means joint. A joint is a place where at least two bones meet (anywhere in the body where two separate bones come together). We classify this area of union as a joint.
The second part of the word arthritis is "itis" which means inflammation. When I was in my second year of medical school, my pathology class used a textbook entitled "Robbins Textbook of Pathology".
The textbook is 1800 pages long and is divided in two basic sections. The first section of the book contained a complete explanation of inflammation - 300 pages. The remaining 1500 pages discuss how the inflammatory process relates to all of the diseases of the human body and it explained them in an encyclopedic fashion.
The first 300 pages of this textbook can basically be distilled down to four areas - pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function (meaning either point of concern does not work like it did when it was normal or it hurts to move it). So you see, any joint that has pain, redness, swelling, does not function as it should, or it hurts when it is moved, is in fact, an arthritic joint or a condition of arthritis.
The other important concept you must know about is what causes arthritis. Now that you are a relative expert on what arthritis is, you must be saying to yourself, there are an infinite number of things that can cause pain, redness, swelling, and loss of function in the joint.
The most common of these causes is trauma - an individual gets hit by a blunt object, or falls on a hard substance like the ground or pavement, or the individual has over used a joint as in some repetitive activity.
This is seen quite often in people who go up for rebounds in basketball for years and get knee injuries as a result of the constant pounding of all that weight. This is termed as post-traumatic arthritis.
Infections can cause arthritis too. Gonorrhea is a classical example of an organism causing arthritis. This cause must be thought of when very sexually active individuals are afflicted with arthritis, particularly in a single joint.
The most common form of arthritis is "wear and tear" usually seen in older humans and animals. Simply stated, a "long term use" problem and causes the patient to visit his or her doctor many times over the years. It also results in the use of many anti-inflammatory medications such as Ibuprofen, aspirin, etc.
The most crippling form of arthritis is Rheumatoid Arthritis. It affects millions of human beings in the U.S. and much more worldwide, of course. Interestingly enough, the cause of rheumatoid arthritis will almost always be listed as unknown in the standard textbooks that discuss rheumatoid.
But I have a different understanding of rheumatoid. In the late 1980's, I had the opportunity to spend quite some time with T. McPherson Brown, M.D., an outstanding doctor in the field of rheumatoid disease.
Dr. Brown spent the last fifty years of his life studying rheumatoid disease. He came up with a very practical working definition of the cause and the treatment of this disorder. He felt an infectious agent caused the disease, and that it should be treated with anti-infectious agents. He worked on this theory over many decades and had thousands of successes.
I have since adopted the treatment protocol and have also seen many successes. I have not had as many years experience or the volume of patients that Dr. Brown had, given his geographic location right around Washington, D.C., but I have had enough successes to let me know that Dr. Brown was absolutely on the right track with this problem.
The other concept Dr. Brown taught me that was quite revolutionary was that all of the rheumatoid diseases are essentially the same disease, but variants of the same infection.
For example, many of you have probably heard of Lupus (the short term for systemic lupus erythematosus), Scleroderma, Polyarteritis Nodosa, Raynauds Disease and Syndrome, Mixed Connective Tissue Disease (MCTD), and Sjogren's Syndrome.
All of these diseases are considered a part of the rheumatoid disease family, collagen vascular disease family, or autoimmune disease family. Dr. Brown's feeling was that these diseases were all basically variants of the same problem and could, therefore, be treated the same way with the proper antibiotic.
There are, however, a few reasons why his concepts were not. One is the fact that the antibiotics that were used were out of patent.
Therefore, since there was no patent on antibiotics and anyone could manufacture them, the drug companies were not very interested in antibiotics as they would not produce an abudance of revenue.
You have to know that the general practice of "big money medicine" is based on the ability to patent a drug. If the substance can not be patented, then it can be made by anyone and no exclusive right can be given to any one company. Consequently, there is no serious interest in promoting that type of medication.
The other reason Dr. Brown's concept was not widely accepted is because the various organizations that are in business to raise money for arthritis research and the like, are basically in business to do just that.
They are not really in business to eradicate the disease because that would end their livelihood or careers. The Arthritis Foundation was so against new ideas that they would never let Dr. Brown speak at their conventions.
You may think their decision was based on their assumption that he was a quack or an out of the "main stream" practitioner. Nothing can be farther from the truth. Dr. Brown was a graduate of Swarthmore College outside of Philadelphia, a very prestigious college.
He was also a graduate of Johns Hopkins Medical School in Baltimore, MD. He was the chairman of the Department Internal Medicine at George Washington University Hospital in Washington, DC. for twenty years, and he published over 50 papers addressing these issues to explain the research he conducted to support his ideas regarding his findings.
The fact that the establishment never accepted him was a source of great discomfort to him. He shared his feelings with me on several occasions before he passed away in 1989. Fortunately, he wrote a book in association with Henry Scammel entitled "The Road Back".
From this book, came a foundation known as "The Road Back Foundation". Please visit their web site for more information www.roadback.org.
This foundation acts as a clearing-house for information about Dr. Brown and his work. The information shared on the site it can be obtained by physicians around the world who wish to practice this safe and effective therapy for the rheumatoid diseases.
I mention Dr. Brown primarily because he got excellent results in most of the rheumatoid cases he treated, and because you need to be as knowledgeable as possible if you are suffering or someone you know suffers from this disorder. Most physicians are a bit reluctant to try something new even if it is as simple and effective as Dr. Brown's therapy.
When I first started to use the therapy in 1987, other doctors thought of it as being completely taboo. Since Dr. Brown's death, there has been great interest in looking at antibiotics as a possible therapy. This sudden turnaround in the establishment's attitude results from the fact that most of the standard medications used for rheumatoid diseases are just about worthless with respect to ever eradicating the disease. Unfortunately, the teaching institutions around the country that are sponsoring the research in this antibiotic therapy are actually doing it in a manner different from the protocol prescribed by Dr. Brown. Consequently, many of them are not getting anywhere near the results that Dr. Brown experienced. As a result, most of this research is going to eventually yield poor results. So, we will just have to wait and see how the future handles this important issue. In the mean time, the therapy is available for people who are persistent and really interested in receiving the treatment.
The other important thing I must mention about the rheumatoid problem that Dr. Brown taught me, is that the key symptoms involved in rheumatoid diseases are not always those that most of us expect to see. To illustrate my point, many patients who suffer from rheumatoid disease will present fatigue and depression as their primary symptoms.
These symptoms will be paramount and will sometimes exist in the absence of joint symptoms altogether. Years ago, one of my patients brought her husband to me so I could explain to him that in spite of the fact that she looked wonderful all the time, she suffered from severe fatigue and depression, and did have rheumatoid disease.
Depression from rheumatoid disease is different from the depression that one would expect because one is ill. This depression is, in fact, a part of the disease process. Although every person with this disorder does not suffer from depression, it is extremely common and will clear when the disease is cured. I find it very helpful to explain to patients who have this disorder that they must expect these symptoms at times. You must approach the depression not from a standpoint of needing anti-depressant medication, but that you need an anti-arthritic treatment. The fatigue is almost absolute with this disease and is of the nature where people can get 10-12 hours of sleep and wake up feeling as if they had no sleep at all.
The other very important characteristic of rheumatoid disease is that more often than not, people awaken with morning stiffness or discomfort. This is one of the classical complaints of a person who has rheumatoid disease.
The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis. I have used various treatment protocols to address this over the years. I have found that some protocols work better than others depending upon the individuals.
I have used many methods to treat this disease including honeybee stings directly into the joint, which has been very helpful, but of course, many patients have an aversion to being stung by live honeybees.
I now use injectable bee venom for this approach, which is a lot more acceptable to patients and is very effective. I have used the combination of glucosamine sulphate with some good results.
The other approach I have used with very good success in both osteoarthritic and rheumatoid arthritic problems is a treatment I learned from some of my close friends who practice alternative medicine.
This approach/therapy involves administering balanced hormones for short-term use and has no long-term adverse affects.
The treatment program is given over a seven-week period. Patients usually experience great improvement of their condition within the first four weeks of treatment.
A booster is occasionally needed once every 4-8 weeks period. My patients have been very pleased with the results of this therapy.
As you can see, there are many ways to approach the treatment of rheumatoid and osteoarthritis problems. All of the therapies that I mentioned in this discussion are safe and effective but are not generally known by most physicians.
If you are interested in scheduling an appointment to receive any of the treatments discussed, please contact one of my offices.
If you are interested in Dr. Brown's work and would like to read more about it, you can order the new book by Henry Scammel, "The New Arthritis Breakthrough".
This book includes the original book written by Dr. Brown the "Road Back" and updated information that has been created since Dr. Brown's death in 1989. This book can be viewed on the following web site : www.roadback.org.
I hope this information has been helpful. I wish you much success in your journey to improve this condition.
For free information about additional treatments for Arthritis, please visit the Arthritis Trust of America's web site at http://www.arthritistrust.org
Source of OsteoArthritis Post
http://www.burtonwellnesscenter.com/index.cfm?do=Arthritis
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