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Allergy is a disorder of the immune system often also referred to as atopy.
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An antidepressant is a psychiatric medication used to alleviate mood disorders, such as major depression and dysthymia.
Arthritis [4]
Arthritis is a group of conditions involving damage to the joints of the body.
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Cancer is a class of diseases in which a group of cells display uncontrolled growth
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Risk factors for heart disease: infections
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A fat-like substance called a lipid. It is used to build cell membranes, hormones and bile acids
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The inability of the body to produce, or the inability to metabolize, the human hormone insulin; Diabetes insipidus, usually a disorder of the ...
Epilepsy [3]
Epilepsy is a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by recurrent unprovoked seizures
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The digestive tract is the system of organs within multicellular animals that takes in food...
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The infant, child or young person?s current health condition
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Herbal tea, herbal medicine
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Hormones - Proteins produced by organs of the body that trigger activity in other locations.
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For men on fitness, health, sex, caree
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Pain management is the medical discipline concerned with the relief of pain.
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The skin is the outer covering of the body
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Loss of body weight by dieting or due to various easting disorders or medical conditions.
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Find information on women's health issues, and lifestyle at the Women's Health
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Arthritis and related muscle and joint pains ARTHRITIS AND RELATED MUSCLE AND JOINT PAINS
Arthritis is one of the most common systemic physical diseases in advanced countries. There are two main types, rheumatoid and osteoarthritis; rheumatoid arthritis may begin at any age, but usually is found earlier in a person's life than osteoarthritis or degenerative arthritis, which is more characteristic of older people.
So-called traumatic arthritis may develop into either rheumatoid or osteoarthritis. And mixed arthritis, with features of both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis, is also common. Although any joint or joints may be involved in rheumatoid or osteoarthritis, the joints of the hands are particularly vulnerable. While the terminal finger joints are characteristically affected in osteoarthritis, involvement of the second finger joints and, to a less extent, the knuckles and wrists are characteristically affected in rheumatoid arthritis.
This chapter is principally concerned with rheumatoid arthritis and to a lesser extent with the muscle involvement (allergic myalgia) which so frequently accompanies it. Victims of rheumatoid arthritis, either with or without myalgia (muscle aching), do not need to be reminded that orthodox medicine tends to be at a loss to explain the origin of their illness or to offer effective measures in its treatment, beyond the use of aspirin or other pain-killers. Any considerations of "causes" is usually subject to debate concerning alleged bodily mechanisms. Unfortunately, the causative roles of environmental factors in rheumatoid arthritis or myalgia are usually not considered seriously.
By contrast, clinical ecology, from the beginning of its involvement with muscle and joint aches and pains, has attempted to understand and pinpoint responsible environmental factors. As with other environmentally related illnesses described in this book, the role played by environmental exposures in instances of rheumatoid arthritis is highly individualized in nature, based on a given person's susceptibility to such a food. For instance, given foods are not incriminated as environmental causes of arthritis in all rheumatoids, nor is there any universal treatment likely to benefit all cases. Indeed, from the standpoint of the application of clinical ecology to this illness and related conditions, there is no substitute for the patient's unravelling of a highly individualized ecologic problem by means of the methods described in this book. Although there had been earlier references to the relationship of foods to arthritis, the first definitive and convincing presentation of this subject occurred in 1949, when Michael Zeller published an article: "Rheumatoid Arthritis— Food Allergy as a Factor," in the Annals of Allergy. Zeller was the first to demonstrate a cause-and-effect relationship between the intake of specific foods and the onset of acute symptoms of arthritis.1 Zeller carefully pointed out that not all patients with rheumatoid arthritis responded to the approach based on the exclusion of incriminated foods. I had worked closely with Dr. Zeller, observing several of his cases at first hand, and confirmed his clinical observations in my own practice. We discussed foods as major factors in arthritis and myalgia in the book we wrote jointly with Rinkel, Food Allergy (1951).
Although approximately 1,000 cases of rheumatoid arthritis have been studied by me from the standpoint of food allergy during the last three decades, there was nothing to report in addition to Zeller's observations until recent years. But as I became increasingly aware of the chemical susceptibility problem, most of the patients who had failed to respond satisfactorily to food allergy management turned out to have at least a part of their arthritis on the basis of susceptibility to environmental chemicals. Consequently, the ecologic management of rheumatoid arthritis due to both foods and environmental chemicals was updated in 1976. The approaches and techniques of clinical ecology offer scientifically founded hope to the great majority of rheumatoid arthritics.
When Dr. Kendall Gerdes, now of Denver, Colorado, was associated with me in training in clinical ecology, we sent follow-up questionnaires to over 200 cases of hospitalized arthritics, who had been managed ecologically. Both the cases of rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis did equally well as a result of avoiding incriminated environmental exposures. It might also be added that other types of arthritis are also environmentally related. Other rheumatoid states, such as Reiter's syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, and psoriatric arthritis, have also been studied ecologically, but in insufficient numbers from which to draw conclusions. My Ecology Unit is currently involved in a prospective study of rheumatoid arthritis of the hands in which measurements of the size, tenderness, and mobility of affected joints are taken prior to and following fasting and challenges with specific foods and environmental chemicals. The results of this study should be available in the near future.
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