Arthritis, God’s recipe for avoiding it!

Arthritis!

According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control), Mar 6, 2017 – “In the United States, 23% of all adults—over 54 million people—have arthritis. Arthritis is a leading cause of disability. The annual direct medical costs are at least 81 billion.” If you live a typical American lifestyle with a typical American diet, you will eventually contract some form of arthritis before you die.

Symptoms of arthritis are pain, weakness, aching, stiffness, and swelling, in or around the joints.

About 50% of US adults with heart disease or diabetes and 33% of people who are obese also have arthritis. Having arthritis and other chronic conditions can reduce the quality of life and make disease management harder.

The centers for disease control teaches people to cope with the disease and reduce it’s effects. They do not believe you can beat the disease. The CDC says, “people with arthritis can work and do other daily activities, have less pain, manage their own care, and delay disability.” Did you get that “Delay disability!” Like being disabled with arthritis is inevitable. [1][2]

What does God Say About Arthritis?

Deuteronomy 7:11-15 “Therefore, take care to follow the commands, decrees and laws I give you today… The Lord will keep you free from every disease”

If you are suffering from Arthritis, I have some great news for you! It is not inevitable, you can overcome arthritis. According to God’s word, we are not going to simply live longer lives if we listen to God’s instructions, we are going to live better lives, way better.

My experience with arthritis!

A few years ago, I ran a 200-mile relay race called Ragnar. It was an awesome experience. We ran south from Canada, along the Washington coast, the scenery was breathtaking. However, when it was over I felt pretty bad. My joints hurt and it took me a while to recover. When the next year came I decided that by training early on I would be better prepared. Instead I never fully recovering from the second race, and as a result I could not run without pain. My next plan was to stretching more, but that didn’t help either. I did all the things I had done in the past to relieve joint pain and nothing worked.

Another thing that I noticed was that I seemed to have lost a lot of strength. I still felt great otherwise, I jog/walked about 3 miles a week and did 120 push-ups a day, but I couldn’t run like before. My office is on the second floor of our church, I used to run up the stairs each day. After the second Ragnar Relay, I just didn’t have the strength to do it anymore.

Your just getting old, get over it!

Now someone might say, “you are in your mid-sixties, what do you expect?” I was starting to believe them, but I wasn’t ready to completely give up. I decided to call my daughter Leah since she has a master’s degree in health and nutrition. When I told her what was going on she suggested I take glucosamine. I said that I was under the impression that glucosamine was in Knox Gelatin. Although she agreed, she suggested that I might not be getting enough in the gelatin. So I started taking glucosimine and felt a lot better, but not 100%. So, fast forward a couple of years later. I start training for a seniors track and field competition held each year in Oregon. The more I trained the more I began to have the same old issues. It became unworkable on our anniversary this year.

An anniversary spoiled by arthritis!

Shary and I try to do something special for our anniversary each year. Our something special, usually includes sunshine, since we live in the darkest place on earth. My rain gauge recorded 181 inches last year. That is about 34 inches a month. It is so dark here that occasionally the street lights come on in the middle of the day. Well this year, February 14^th 2017, we headed to Phoenix, Arizona to play in the sun.

Due to my recent inflammation I was miserable , I could barely walk and couldn’t drive a car. While in Phoenix, I went to two chiropractors, because the sciatica nerve in the back of my right leg was killing me. Both doctors told me the same thing; there is nothing out of alignment, it is probably some swelling in your knee that is pinching the nerve. The second doctor wouldn’t even take my money, he said he couldn’t help me, I begged him to try anyway, but he made me leave his office. I was starting to walk like an old man, you know, shuffling a little and looking like my feet and knees hurt.

Again, people may say that this is a part of getting older. I am not sure how that works since one of my knees hurts a lot more than the other, and I am pretty sure both my knees are the same age. My answer to people who say age is the problem, and your answer should be; “there are people in their nineties who are still running marathons”. Age doesn’t make arthritis inevitable. Somebody is going to be arthritis free, might as well be us.

Could arthritis be the result of a spiritual problem?

Psalm 31:9-10

⁹Be merciful to me, Lord, for I am in distress; my eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and body with grief.
¹⁰My life is consumed by anguish and my years by groaning; my strength fails because of my affliction, and my bones grow weak.

Psalm 38:3, 6, 8

3My body is unhealthy due to your anger, and my bones have no rest due to my sin.
⁶I am bent over and walk about greatly bowed down; all day long I go around mourning.
⁸I am weak and utterly crushed; I cry out in distress because of my heart’s anguish.

In both of these passages, weakness and bone pain are linked to sin. Weakness and bone pain are symptoms of arthritis and are also linked to grieving. We know that if we draw near to God, he promises to draw near to us and comfort us. If we have any unconfessed sin in our lives, a possible solution to our arthritis is to go to God and appropriate His forgiveness. He loves us and his desire is to forgive us; all we need to do is ask and receive.

One of our church members!

We have a dear man in our church who was crippled, he was all bent over when he walked. At his baptism, he followed the advice in the passage below by confessing his sins. A few hours later he called me all excited, yelling that he could raise his arms over his head and that he was walking upright. That happened a number of years ago and he is still walking upright and going strong. That was obviously a miracle, but God is no respecter of persons and his word is true. Maybe you need to receive His forgiveness in order to be healed of arthritis?

1 John 1:7-9

⁷But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all^[a] sin. ⁸If we claim to be without sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us. ⁹If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just and will forgive us our sins and purify us from all unrighteousness.

I believe that if we follow God’s advice about sin and sickness, rest and exercise, food and forgiveness we can be disease free. According to the Bible, Caleb was still able to go to war at 85. Don Pellman is still pole vaulting at 100, someone is going to live healthy past 100, might as well be us.[5][6]

Could I be missing some essential nutrient in my diet?

When we got home from Phoenix, I read everything I could about arthritis. Arthritis is a calcium deficiency disease, a co-factor for the absorption of calcium is vitamin D. Our skin can manufacture vitamin D if it is exposed to sunlight. People who live in darker climates like Astoria Oregon, don’t get enough sunshine and tend to be low in vitamin D. Eating fish like the Bible recommends would probably solve the problem, since fish contain a lot of vitamin D. I realized how little fish I eat and decided to up my fish intake, I also took fish oil capsules. After a week or so I started to feel better but not great.

Another co-factor for calcium absorption is vitamin C, even though I take vitamin C, I don’t usually get to 10,000 mg a day that Linus Pauling recommended. So, I upped my Vitamin C intake and again I felt a little better.

I ran out of glucosamine and just never got around to replacing it!

Something was still missing, then it dawned on me, I had run out of glucosamine about a year ago and never purchased more. I was desperate, we immediately went to Costco and purchased some. I continued to do all the other things and take glucosamine.

It worked so well I could hardly believe it, the last time I felt this good I was in my forties. Now I am literally running up stairs, two steps at a time. Am I back to normal? No, I am feeling better than normal and stronger. I had no idea how weak arthritis could make you. It is not just that people don’t push themselves, because of the pain, arthritis short circuits your nervous system which actually reduces your strength.

Why do we need supplements? People in the Bible didn’t have supplements.

I really think that if we lived in a sunnier climate we might not have this problem. The climate God sent Abraham and Israel to live in was sunny enough to grow citrus fruits. It also had an abundance of fish, milk and honey.

If we ate more fish and boiled our bones like the bible suggests, we probably wouldn’t need all the other supplements. When you boil bones it releases calcium and cartilage material, including glucosamine. [7]

God recommends boiling bones for calcium rich, cartilage rich, soup stock.

Deuteronomy 16:7

Boil and eat the Passover meal at the place that the LORD your God will choose.

Ezekiel 24:3b-5

‘This is what the Sovereign Lord says: “‘Put on the cooking pot; put it on and pour water into it. ⁴Put into it the pieces of meat, all the choice pieces—the leg and the shoulder. Fill it with the best of these bones; ⁵take the pick of the flock.
Pile wood beneath it for the bones; bring it to a boil and cook the bones in it.

If you don’t live in a place like Israel and you don’t have time to boil your meat and bones, you are going to have to supplement. Here is what I did.

Prescription for reversing arthritis and getting your strength back!

Chris’s smoothie recipe. Put all these ingredients in a Nutribullet and blend for 60 seconds. Drink one of these each day for 40 days, then send me an email or comment on this blog post and tell me how you feel. This is my breakfast, I sip on it all morning. Sometimes it supplies enough nutrition that I don’t get hungry till dinner. This also helps keep my weight under control.

One tablet, with 1500 mg. of glucosamine and 1500 mg. MSM
600 mg Calcium + D3
10,000 mg tablets of Vitamin C
2 mg. copper
1000 mg of fish oil
353 mg. Krill oil (Mega Red)
10,000 IU of Vitamin A
400 IU of vitamin E
One packet of Knox Gelatin (cartilage material)
One handful of raisins (for iron)
Two Tablespoons of organic honey (to balance the ph)
¾ cup of frozen raspberry, blueberry, blackberry mix (for antioxidants)
¼ orange (for natural vitamin C)
Two raw eggs, you can use hard boiled if you like (see my blog on raw eggs) [8][9]
Fill the rest of the 2 cup size Nutribullet, with whole milk.

Raisins and honey can be increased to suit your taste, it sweetens the smoothie. Berries, Orange and milk can also be increased to suit your taste.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other Wellness Gospel article, please feel free to send an email to chrisschauermann@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

If you believe God knows what is best for us, join us and the Wellness Gospel team and spread the word, share this with your friends on social media and may God bless you richly.

If you want to keep improving your health and enjoy this biblical view of scientific information then I would like to recommend three must-read books.

“None of These Diseases” by S. I. McMillen, M.D. and David E. Stern, M.D.
“Let’s Play Doctor” by Dr. Joel Wallach
“God’s Guide To Biblical Health and Healing” by Rev. Chris & Shary Schauermann

You can get all these books at Amazon.com

Arthritis https://www.cdc.gov/chronicdisease/resources/publications/aag/arthritis.htm
Arthritis medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=23220
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446222/pdf/10800421.pdf
http://www.chickencartilage.com/harvardstudy/
Don Pellman pole-vaults http://wellnessgospel.net/index.php/2016/12/24/wholewheat-longevity-disease-free-living/
100 year old man pole-vaults http://www.titansreport.com/topic/19232-100-year-old-don-pellman-dominates-the-senior-olympics/
Glucosamine https://draxe.com/glucosamine/
Eggs http://wellnessgospel.net/index.php/2016/10/29/heart-disease-alzheimers-eggs-depression/
Raw eggs http://wellnessgospel.net/index.php/2017/02/04/eggs-oldest-person-alive/

October 1, 2016November 28, 2016

Vitamins and Minerals #2

Do we need vitamins and minerals in our diets?

Do vitamins and minerals do any good? Can’t we get everything we need from a healthy diet? Aren’t we just wasting our money on vitamins and minerals, peeing away our hard earned money? These are common questions and ideas promoted by Colleges, healthcare providers and well meaning friends. But did you know there are at least 16 essential vitamins, 12 essential amino acids, 3 essential fatty acids and 8 essential sugars. You don’t need herbs, you don’t need drugs, you need all 90 essential nutrients to live a disease free life. Vitamins, minerals and other essential nutrients are not just a nice idea they are absolutely vital to a long and sickness-free life. Let me give you a few examples.

My wife Shary had sever bleeding problems at every birth except one and she almost bled to death more than once. After those births it took weeks for her to regain her strength. So what was different at that one birth? It was when our son Nathan was born, Shary had bled a lot with our first three kids and doctor Peter Bours decided that he would give her a shot of vitamin K, right before the birth, hoping it would help. While she was in labor he gave her the shot and virtually no bleeding took place at that birth. Why did it work so well? Vitamin K is one of the necessary nutrients needed for blood clotting. All essential nutrients have specific roles in our wellness. Another problem associated with sever bleeding is that it causes the person to become anemic.

Iron suppliments are routinely prescribed by doctors when people become anemic. Common symptoms of anemia are; (fatigue, pale skin, weakness, shortness of breath, chest pain, frequent infections, headaches, dizziness or lightheadedness, cold hands and feet, inflammation or soreness of tongue, brittle nails, fast heartbeat, unusual cravings for non-nutritive substances, such as ice, dirt or starch, poor appetite, especially in infants and children, uncomfortable tingling or crawling feeling in your legs, restless leg syndrome)1. A great source of Iron are raisins, the iron in raisins is almost 100% digestible. Most Iron supplements are made from ground up iron, which can cause internal bleeding and are mostly indigestible. If you have been taking iron supplements and your iron levels are not going up, try raisins. The best minerals are from plant derived sources.

Vitamin D According to Pubic Health Review; “Early in the twentieth century more than 80 percent of children in industrialized Europe and North America were ravaged by the devastating skeletal consequences of rickets. fortification of dairy products with vitamin D and widespread use of cod liver oil eradicated rickets as a significant health problem by the late 1930s. Many countries mandated the fortification of milk with vitamin D to prevent rickets during wartime shortages. Vitamin D deficiency has again become a major public health interest with its association with osteoporosis, osteomalacia, fractures, and more recently with prevention of cancer, diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses.”2 Why the uptick in vitamin D deficiencies? Because most people have been taught that whole milk is bad so they drink skim milk or 2%. Vitamin D is stored in the milk fat so we now have a generation of people who again are suffering from Vitamin D deficiencies. Once again we find that if we eat our food the closest to the way God made it, we will be better off.

In College my wife and I were told that there was, “no need to take vitamins and minerals, it was just a waste of your money. You can get all you need by eating a healthy diet.” That one statement is so outrageous and so uneducated that the people who say such things are either lying or they are completely unaware of the world around them. Virtually every one knows why sailors of old got scurvy, and what to do about it. They were suffering from a Vitamin C deficiency. It is almost impossible to buy milk that doesn’t have vitamin D added because a lack of vitamin D would cause an epidemic of rickets.

Ingredients

Bleached Enriched Wheat Flour, Malted Barley Flour (Improves Yeast Baking), Niacin, Iron, Thiamin Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid.

It’s almost impossible to get white flour that is not enriched with vitamins and minerals, because without those vitamins we would again, have an epidemic of pellagra. Before the addition of vitamins and minerals to white flour, pellagra was the worst epidemic to ever hit the U.S.3

Let me reiterate if someone tells you that you don’t need to take vitamins and minerals in our society, that person is mentally, a couple of fries short of a happy meal. If you are suffering from anemia everyone knows you need Iron supplements. If your child has rickets they will be given vitamin D supplements. The idea that we do not need to supplement our diets with vitamins and minerals is foolish if not a crime.

I was talking to a man I met in California, while attending a wedding. When I found out how old he was I asked him for his secret, he looked half his age, maybe even younger. He said he didn’t have one so I asked him if he exercised and he told me he had a Fitbit that made sure he walked a certain number of steps each day. I asked him if he took vitamins and minerals and he said well sure, quit a few each day. So he didn’t have a secret he just did what any intelligent person would do, moderately exercise each day and take vitamins and minerals to supplement their diet.

So how do you know what to take and how much?

In the seventies, I went to school to be a dairyman. In that school we were taught to spot symptoms in dairy cows and then to treat those symptoms with vitamins and minerals. There are veterinary books that describe symptoms and corresponding vitamin and mineral treatments. They work! One time Shary was complaining of all the symptoms that dairymen called “milk fever or cow fever”. I chose my words carefully making certain that I did not use the word “cow” and explained to her that she was experiencing a vitamin and mineral deficiency. We purchase what she needed and it worked, all the symptoms where gone. So should you get that dairyman’s manual? Nope, we are not cows, though some deficiencies diseases are common among all mammals, you need to get a vitamin and mineral reference for you.

Dr. Joel Wallach has produced a corresponding volume for humans called Lets play Doctor. Another great book is Prescription for Nutritional Healing by Phyllis A. Balch

Purchasing one or both of these books is a must for anyone who wants out of the “system” and is ready to take charge of his or her own health. There must be something wrong with the system when American citizens are paying 1.2 trillion dollars in health care each year. And the American people are less healthy than almost all other industrial nations. According to Joel Wallach we give our dogs 40 essential minerals in Science Diet dog food. We give lab rats 28 essential minerals in Purina food pellets and we only give our human babies 12 minerals in their baby food. And we wonder why young children have poor health and are getting autism, cancer and other horrible diseases in unheard of numbers.

I make a lot of references to Dr. Wallach, because he is one of the few health experts that rarely gives advice about food that is contrary to the teachings of the Bible. He has also done some of the most extensive research we have ever seen. The wonderful thing is that through research he has come to some of the same conclusions that we have come to by studying the Scriptures. True science is not in opposition to the teachings of the bible. The world of God is not in conflict with the word of God. The more scientist study, the more they find that the God of the bible is the God who created man and the earth.

Almost everything we have tried, that Wallach has suggested, has worked..

Here is another American problem of epidemic proportions.

Arthritis and joint problems are at epidemic proportions and are some of the easiest problems to fix. They include Aching hands, knee problems, hip problems, rotator cup and shoulder problems, disc and back problems, foot and arch problems. The reason we in the States have so much trouble with this is because we do not eat all the connective tissue in meat. We also rarely boil soup stock any more with bone in it. Both of these practices provide us with cartilage material and calcium in our food. I have lost count of the number of people I have helped to get rid of these unnecessary afflictions. The long term solution is to boil our meat with the bone on it and drink the soup stock.

But; the quick fix is a packet of Knox gelatin, (ground up connective tissue) which can be purchased at any grocery store for very little money, mixed in a glass of calcium enriched Minute Maid orange juice, once a day, along with a vitamin and mineral supplement that contains all 90 essential nutrients. (You can get that at American Youngevity). The younger you are the quicker the cure. If you are over 30, it just takes a little longer. By the way, we stole this idea from Dr. Wallach.

Your body needs raw materials to do its job. If you are having joint problems your body needs Calcium and joint material. A friend of mine, who had stopped playing soccer because of knee pain, told me that his knees had swollen badly and he had to take painkillers every day just to walk and move around. I suggested he try Knox gelatin. He took my advice, in about a month, he told me that he was pain free, without medication. A high school freshman told me that he couldn’t run track because of knee problems, I suggested Knox gelatin. He was running in only a couple of weeks and by the end of the season, he had improved to the point that he took fifth in the one-hundred-meter dash at the state track meet. Another young man told me that he couldn’t pitch on the high school baseball team anymore because of a rotator cup problem. You guessed it. He did it, and he ended up pitching through the entire season. The following year he pitched his team to a state championship. Doctors will tell you that it is impossible to regrow cartilage and they are right, that is, if you do not give your body the raw materials it needs. I am not using these examples to show that you will improve your athletic ability, but to show that people who are using their joints to the maximum can not only improve their joint health with the addition of proper nutrients, but can also thrive under even the most rigorous conditions.

In the September 24, 1993 edition of the Denver Post, the Harvard Medical School and Boston V.A. Hospital published a study. They did the study to prove Dr. Wallach wrong. Dr. Wallach was prescribing the above, inexpensive formula, to people suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and knee and other joint problems. Harvard picked arthritis sufferers for their study who had failed to respond in any way to standard medical treatment. The only thing left for these patients was joint replacement surgery. They were asked to postpone their surgeries and suffer 90 more days. 59 volunteers were found (Not sure I would have volunteered). 28 received Knox gelatin only, and 31 received placebos. The 31 who took placebos got worse. So what happened to the other 29? After 10 days all the pain and inflammation was gone. In 30 days they had full use of their hands, and after 90 days they had maximum return of function. Harvard’s report was that “The DRUG had been beneficial.” In 90 days Knox gelatin had become a drug. So what did Harvard Medical School do? They patented their discovery, and are selling it to their patients at an unbelievably exaggerated price.4

If anyone tells you that taking vitamins is a waste of time and money; they either trying to sell you prescription drugs instead, or they may be rowing but they don’t have all of their mental oars in the water. Anyone who thinks you don’t need supplements, couldn’t pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel. So if you want to live a long sickness free life in our society, drugs are not the answer, essential nutrients are. God has told us what food is good, what food is bad and how to treat the land so that our food will meet our needs. God says that refined foods are so bad for you and me that eating them is like cutting our own throats with a knife (Proverbs 23:1-3) and according to John chapter 1 and Hebrews 1:2; Jesus created the heavens and the earth and everything in them. Everything includes Man and Food for man. His instructions are in his Word, the Bible, for our benefit. Happy eating.

Next week we will look at more common nutritional deficiencies and how to fix them. We will also talk about how to read highly misleading food labels.

If you have any questions or comments about this or any other Wellnessgospel article, please feel free to contact me at chrisschauermann@gmail.com. I would love to hear from you.

If you believe God knows best, join us and the Wellness Gospel team and spread the word, share this with your friends on social media and may God bless you richly.

If you want to keep improving your health and enjoy this biblical view of scientific information then I would like to recommend three must-read books.

“None of These Diseases” by S. I. McMillen, M.D. and David E. Stern, M.D.
“Let’s Play Doctor” by Dr. Joel Wallach
“God’s Guide To Biblical Health and Healing” by Rev. Chris & Shary Schauermann

You can get all these books at Amazon.com

http://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/iron-deficiency-anemia/basics/symptoms/con-20019327
http://www.publichealthreviews.eu/show/f/35
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1446222/pdf/10800421.pdf
http://www.chickencartilage.com/harvardstudy/