Arthritis

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Arthritis

 

If Dracula were an old woman, he would have sounded a

lot like Mrs. Kelremor. But there was no other

physical resemblance. Just shy of eighty, this

middle-European immigrant lady had been a housekeeper

for decades. Overweight, bent over, worn out and

weighted down with cares, she came to see me primarily

because of osteoarthritis.

 

It was the 1980's: disco was still considered music,

and arthritis was still said to have no nutritional

connection or cure. For centuries, quacks have known

otherwise. Today, more and more, the medical

profession is finally catching on. But Mrs. Kelremor

had waited long enough. She said to me, in her thick

Transylvanian accent:

 

" I can't vork. I can't svleep. I om in pain all oof

da time. "

 

I vill now drop the accent; you get the picture.

 

Mrs. Kelremor bowed her curly, gray-haired head as

she continued speaking.

 

" Look at my hands. I can't close them anymore. Look

at my knees, all swollen. I am sore all over. "

 

As if that were not enough, she showed me an

assortment of lumps on her arms and legs. Her medico

had told her they were benign. They certainly were

not pleasant to behold.

 

" What can I do? " she said. " My husband does not

work. I have to work. I have to clean. "

 

I said that she might want to try a real dietary

overhaul, beginning with vegetable juice fasting.

There is a fine line between irresponsible promises

and stimulating encouragement. I attempted to

straddle that line by telling her that she had little

to risk with vegetables.

 

She looked up, for the first time during the

interview, and slowly said, " I will try anything. "

 

Anything? Even living on raw vegetable juices eight

days in a row, followed by a very light eating for

three days, and a raw-food diet for the next ten?

 

" Yes, " she said. " Anything. "

 

The drop-out rate in such a program is high. That is

probably the only true drawback of such an otherwise

venerable, simple and safe program. To many, juice

fasting conjures up images of starvation, electrolyte

imbalance, malnutrition and exhaustion. All false,

and for very elementary reasons.

 

Firstly, vegetables are especially nourishing foods,

and a variety of vegetables guarantees more than

adequate nutrition. The fact that they are juiced

does not change that. Secondly, you cannot hurt

yourself with produce. There is no down side to a

vegetable diet, particularly when accompanied with a

couple of good multivitamin pills each day. Thirdly,

look at the animal kingdom. Elephants are huge and

muscular, with bones like tree trunks. They eat

leaves and roots and shoots. The clearly get enough

protein and calcium. So will you. In America,

100,000 cows are slaughtered every day. Their meat is

a good source of vitamin B-12, among other things. So

in self-righteous panic, dietitians scream that you

need to eat animal products, especially meat, to get

B-12! Really? Where did the cow get her B-12, hmm?

She only eats grains and grasses.

 

So adequate nutrition, really far more than adequate

nutrition, can be maintained for weeks at a time on

veggies alone. " But why juice? Why not just eat the

vegetables? " Because you won't, that's why. Juicing

guarantees quantity. If you juice, you simply will

consume more vegetables. It is quicker and easier to

down the juice than to sit and munch, so you will

consume more. Additionally, the absorption of juiced

vegetables is excellent, far superior to what you can

get after just using your choppers to chew. Not being

ruminants, like cows or giraffes, we get only one

chance to masticate our food. A juicer does the job

vastly better.

 

So that's it, then. A safe therapy that is too

simple to work.

 

But it does. And the wretchedly bent-over Mrs.

Kelremor was willing to try it.

 

Not without a fight, however. For weeks, I got her

phone calls. " Can I have soup? " Sure, if it will

please you. " Can I have some sausage? " No. " Can I

cook some of the vegetables? " Some vegetables have to

be cooked, such as sweet potatoes, and moving away

from a strict meaning of the word vegetable, lima

beans and rice. If some of these foods will keep a

person on the program, fine. Vegetable juices should

still be the focus and the bulk of every meal.

 

 

" Every meal? " you, and Mrs. Kelremor would say.

" Even breakfast? "

 

Look, folks: For breakfast, we drink hot bean extract

and eat undeveloped bird embryos and the ripened

ovaries of trees. We eat the muscles of ground up

dead pigs placed between pulverized seeds fermented

with a fungus, with a slice of curdled cow breast

milk. And if I suggest vegetable juices, I'm the

oddball?

 

So I conceded this and that to insure her compliance.

Don't sweat the small stuff. After nearly a

quarter-century as a quack, I know people.

 

Mrs. Kelremor's calls persisted, at various times of

the day. At least I knew she was on the program. Over

time, they were fewer and fewer. She seemed to be

doing fine.

 

A year passed.

 

One day I was shopping in a friend's health food

store. There were a few people at the check-out

counter. One was a tallish lady, or if not tall, she

certainly had very good posture.

 

" Remember me? " she said, with the unmistakable voice

of Bela Legosi on estrogen.

 

I recalled only the voice. It did not match this

graceful woman, at ease and smiling, buying a counter

full of vitamins. But it was Mrs. Kelremor.

 

I greeted her, and she wasted no time in telling me:

 

" I can work. I can bend, and reach, and sit and

stand, and walk without any pain. I can work! I feel

like a new woman. "

 

She actually said something more like, " I veel loke

new voman, " but enough of that.

 

I couldn't help but notice that the lumps on her arms

and legs were gone. It wasn't surgery; a year and a

half of juicing had apparently eradicated them. Now

that was a bit unexpected.

 

And all this progress, past age 80. I saw something

similar with a woman half her age.

 

The early forties is a bit young for rheumatoid

arthritis, especially arthritis as severe as

Cynthia's. Mostly I remember her hands. They were an

old lady's hands on a middle-aged woman's body.

Swollen knuckles, fingers tightly drawn together to a

point, almost like a paintbrush. Cynthia could hardly

move them, and never without pain. The doctors, and

there had been many, had all told her that there was

nothing that could be done. Well, pain killers, but

nothing else. Diet, perhaps? she'd asked them. Of

course not, they'd told her.

 

She disbelieved them just enough to come and see me.

 

I suggested that she do the same thing as Mrs. K. had

done, and hope for the same results.

 

" And you are so much younger than her, " I added.

" Perhaps you have an advantage there. "

 

At the very least, she complained a lot less. I had

just one or two conversations with her on the phone

over the next many months.

 

It was about eighteen months later when I actually

saw Cynthia again in person. She had scheduled a

follow-up appointment and breezed through the door

into my office.

 

" Hi! " she said.

 

" Hello! " I answered. But who are you? is what I

thought. Now I do not have a good head for names or

faces to begin with, but this was extraordinary. I

really thought there had been a mistake. I had gotten

my appointment book messed up. This could not be

Cynthia. I was expecting someone else, someone with

at least some signs of arthritis. This woman had

none.

 

" Look! " she said. " Look what I can do! "

 

She flexed and turned her wrists and opened and

closed all her fingers, effortlessly. I'm no

orthopedist, but anyone could see that there was

nearly complete range of motion.

 

" Wow! " I said. " What have you been doing? "

 

She looked at me as if I asked an odd question.

 

" What we talked about, " she answered. " I've been

juicing every day, and fasting on juices every other

week. For the last year and a half! And look at my

complexion! "

 

Cynthia, or whoever this person really was, had

almost no wrinkles. Her skin tone was perfect,

perhaps a bit on the carotene-orange side. USA Today

has described this harmless mega-juicing side effect

as looking like " an artificial sun tan. " True. The

doctors' Merck Manual describes hypercarotenosis

" harmless. " Also true.

 

I describe it as " effective. " There is more to

juicing than just carotenes. The complex

carbohydrates, raw food enzymes, organic minerals and

vitamins, soluble fibers, and other vegetable

nutrients makes for the perfect antidote to the

protein-dominated, fat- heavy, sugar-laden

arthritis-causing Standard American Diet.

 

Once, my own mother had arthritis. She was just

entering her sixties. The symptoms were not severe,

but they were getting worse each year. She started

taking vitamins, juicing, and most notably, eating

lentil sprouts.

 

Mom is a unique person, a " strange bird " as our old

hardware-store man used to say. She will stick to an

idea, even an untenable one, for a long time. This

time, her talents for stubbornness were put to good

use.

 

Every morning, Mom would have a large bowlful of

sprouted lentils. Lentils look like brown split peas.

To sprout them, she would soak dry lentils overnight

in tap water. The next morning, she'd pour off the

soaking water, rinse and drain them. Later that day,

she'd rinse and drain the lentils once more. They

were ready for breakfast the next day. This may

already sound pretty funky, but she went one step

further: she topped them with molasses, and ate them

with a spoon.

 

Yum.

 

Now where does an otherwise intelligent person pick

up ideas like this?

 

Guilty. Yes, I was the culprit.

 

I will stand on the results, though. It was

considerably less than a year and my mom had no trace

of arthritis. And this may be the really good news:

she eventually discontinued the lentil meal, and also

the moderate (one glass per day) juicing she was

doing. She still continues to take her vitamins to

this day.

 

I know this lady and her hands especially well. The

raw sprout program worked. Juicing worked for Cynthia

and Mrs. Kelremor. It all sounds quacky, because it

is.

 

But that's how arthritis was eradicated from three

sets of hands.

 

 

Copyright C 1999 and prior years Andrew W. Saul,

Number 8 Van Buren Street, Holley, New York 14470.