Natural Cures for Arthritis with Ellen Kamhi

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In this episode of The Functional Medicine Radio show, Dr. Carri’s special guest Ellen Kamhi talks about arthritis and inflammation, and natural remedies to halt arthritis in its tracks.

Ellen has been involved in Natural Medicine since 1964. Ellen is a professional member of the American Herbalist Guild and is a board certified holistic nurse. She’s written many books, and is a TV and radio host.

Main Questions Asked:

What is some of the research about where arthritis comes from?
Can you explain what stealth pathogens are?
What are some of the herbs that can be used to help with inflammation?

Key Points Made By Ellen:

Over the years, I’ve seen many patients no longer have arthritis.
When we talk about the word “cure” what we mean is the reversal of all symptoms, no longer have the pain, or if disfigured, a discontinuation of further breakdown in the joint structure. Also, the reversal of blood indicators.
There is a vast amount of knowledge available in mainstream medical publications on where arthritis comes from, like the Journal of Rheumatology.
Things that cause inflammation in the body are linked directly to leaky gut.
If you want to reverse a disease, you have to take responsibility for the causes.
Very often toxins are in the food you eat. If you’re not eating organic and are eating your food allergens, these can trigger a response.
Are you eating packaged foods? If there are words there you cannot pronounce or sound like chemicals, they probably are.
The first step is a cleansing diet. For those who don’t want to do that, perhaps their physician and medication is the right route for them.
People who want to use natural remedies have to take responsibility for what they put into their mouths and what they do with their body like exercise and movement.
Stress reduction is helpful and effective like mind-body work, massages, and rubbing a tennis ball on the bottom of your foot.
Take active action in your life.
Some herbs to use to clean toxins out of liver are milk thistle, dandelion and burdock root.
Stealth pathogens are microorganisms that can encase themselves and hide such as lyme disease. They are able to hide from the immune system by covering up the white blood cell receptors that would normally indicate that there’s an invader and should be destroyed.
Another problem that causes things like autoimmune disease is the overuse of antibiotics. This causes the development of resistant strains.
Some natural remedies such as berberine actually downregulates the pump and does not allow the microorganisms to use it and that’s why it’s an excellent natural antibiotic which doesn’t cause anti-resistant strains.
Either you change your lifestyle and the initiating factors or the disease will continue to advance.
When looking at non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs to bring down the pain of arthritis, the problem is they actually increase leaky gut syndrome and in that way they make the disease process worse and not better!
One of many great herbs to use is curcumin. It’s well-proven to have anti-microbial, anti-carcinogenic and anti-inflammatory effects. It’s sort of like the wonder herb. If combined with piperine (from black pepper) you get a much better absorption.
Other herbs to help with the inflammation of arthritis are boswellia, white willow bark, external topical agents such as ginger compresses.
For autoimmune types of arthritis, the best combo is rehmannia, rosemary or rosmarinic acid, and cordyceps. These all help deactivate the autoimmune response.