"Natural" (plant-based) Health Solutions

Nobody said "diet can relieve all pain."

Gout is an acute form of inflammatory arthritis, so no, it is not a different disease. All I know is that the person who has tried it for severe arthritic pain in her hands says it makes a big difference and I had the impression it helped in my case too but I didn't give it enough of a try. Pain level is subjective enough to make it hard to judge after all. I think I'll try again, though, and monitor my blood sugar closely, hoping it doesn't become a problem for that.Even if it were a different disease, "relieves all pain" wouldn't be a fair assessment.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

We're talking about PAIN RELIEF, specifically by reducing inflammation, not "undoing the abuse of joints." And all references I've found call gout a form of arthritis.ABE: Mayo Clinic, for instance: Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I kinda don't think the Mayo Clinic would confuse those things. In any case what we are talking about here is a nutrient that seems to be able to reduce the pain from joint inflammation whatever its cause.

(from Andrew Weil's site)Found out it's also good for insomnia:Cherry Juice Helps You Sleep Better

Look it up. It also helps arthritis in general, both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis.

Osteoarthritis Patients May Benefit From Drinking Tart Cherry Juice =

It's specifically called an "anti-inflammatory," and the markers in the blood that were the indicators of efficacy in the studies Modulus was talking about were specifically markers for inflammation. That's why it is thought it could be effective for any form of inflammation of the joints. Besides which, there are anecdotal reports from sufferers of osteoarthritis that it does seem to reduce their pain, which would be due to reduction in inflammation.

The effective ingredient is called Anthocyanin.

Odd that it is common knowledge, verified many times by experience, that cherry juice and just cherries are very effective at reducing gout pain. Even doctors tell people that.

JAR mentioned on the thread about changing phones and carriers (Message 1) that he recently had a severe vertigo attack that left him lying on the bathroom floor. I want to ask him how long he's had such spells and if he happens to know if it's a particular disease and if he's found any remedies and all that, since I mentioned on this thread (in Message 132 and Message 136) the disease of the inner ear called Meniere's that also causes vertigo attacks and can be quite debilitating. I don't recall your mentioning this before and wonder if you'd describe it here. I now know five people who get vertigo attacks, all men for some reason and all in their sixties and seventies. These attacks are not all the same disease. I know of three that have Meniere's and one who has something else he doesn't know the name of that is more or less manageable with a nausea medication. They are all horrible interferences with normal living but the nonMeniere's versions seem to be more manageable than Meniere's.I mentioned on this thread that my brother found a woman who claims to have cured her own Meniere's mostly with diet and supplements and wrote a book about it titled "Meniere's Whisperer." so he's been trying her regime. He thinks it's helping, has cut down on the frequency of the dizzy spells and their duration, but it's always hard to judge those things since no two episodes are alike anyway.Thanks for any input.

I'm not looking for any particular kind of treatment, I'd be interested in what his doctors tell him and if anything works at all. My impression is that doctors don't know much about any of it, and the woman's "natural" regime was the only hopeful information I've ever seen. Unfortunately it's not working consistently enough, yet anyway, to be something I'd recommend. In any case it's a treatment specifically for Meniere's and there are many causes of dizziness besides that.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

At least for Meniere's, it isn't a vestibular problem so retraining won't work in that case. There's another disease that can be helped by rapidly shaking the head to rearrange calcium crystals that cause the dizziness by somehow getting displaced. That isn't the situation with Meniere's either. Fluid pressure in the ear is the usual diagnosis in Meniere's but now an association with the herpes virus and chickenpox is also suspected. Of course jar hasn't yet said if he knows what disease he has.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You don't have to explain it of course, but I'd really like to know WHAT it is you are living with, what doctors tell you it is. Many of the people who have some version of a vertigo disease give up a lot of their lives to it, have to stop driving, give up jobs, stop going out in public. It's far from easy to just live with it.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I'm now an aspiring or beginning Whole Food Plant-Based "vegan" after listening to many You Tube presentations on the subject, and seeing some films, such as "What the Health" and "Forks over Knives" which is available on Netflix, and "Raw Food Documentary National Geographic Special." "Forks over Knives" is probably the most thorough presentation of the history of the move to plant-based eating, with the best documentation in nutritional studies.I've also listened to many of the presentations by Joel Fuhrman, though he is just one of many worth hearing, and although there is general agreement among them on the fundamental principle of eating plants over meat and dairy, either exclusively or predominantly, they are far from agreeing with each other on details, which I think gives it all more legitimacy.Fuhrman uses a system he gives the acronym GBOMBS, for Greens, Beans, Onions, Mushrooms, Berries and Seeds. John McDougall is the Starch Based Diet guy who argues that you need a staple starch and can't major in greens, putting grains, rice, potatoes at the head of his plan.They all claim dramatic improvement in health on their system and of course I believe them. Enough to be switching my own eating in that direction. Not for any scientific reason but just because I like potatoes I'm taking McDougall's starch-based system as a starting point, but I do particularly enjoy Fuhrman's presentations and find his GBOMBS formula very handy. There are also Esselstyn, and Campbell,who are the main subjects of "Forks over Knives," and many others, and I think they are all worth listening to There's even a panel discussion that includes them all together, where McDougall and Fuhrman "duke it out" as one audience member put it. They all quote studies and statistics.There are other films I suppose I'll eventually watch, such as "Earthlings" which I understand is the most horrifying of the presentaitons of how animals are raised by Agribusiness, though "What the Health" was horrifying enough for me. I'm interested in the health benefits of emphasizing plants over animal foods, and the animal rights groups that are responsible for a lot of the switch to veganism weren't part of my interest at first. But I have to say they've made their case only too well and I think we should all know a lot more about these things. However, the human health aspect is still the main issue even with their revelations. If anyone watches "What the Health" I hope it makes you thoroughly sick to see what the meat industry is doing to a black neighborhood.However, again, it is the scientific evidence of how meat and dairy are not good for our health that is most persuasive to me. This is presented most compellingly in "Forks over Knives" (I haven't yet seen the whole National Geographic video yet though, and there are others I also plan to see eventually) but all of the presentations have some scientific support to offer on that subject.I was an Atkins diet fan for so long it took me some time to come over to the idea of giving up all meat and dairy and I went through stages of holding on to some percentage of it before I got here. And I'm not entirely "here" yet either although I'm hoping to try as total a plant-based system as I can manage to put together for some period of time before I have another meal with meat or an egg.FAKE VEGANISM
There is a veganism that is basically junk food, and a guy who has a video to explain how to start a plant-based diet calls it that. He doesn't give his name but I found his video very helpful as he organizes the Whole Food Plant Based diet for beginners, in his case starting with the McDougall starchy foods.I also watched Oprah's program on how she got some of her staff to sign up for a week on a vegan diet, which did have some interesting information, particularly about the meat industry, but I was appalled at the foods they considered to be vegan, which is what they advised their people to eat, and fed them too. Yes, junk food. Fake pizza, fake cheese, fake hot dogs. What a travesty. There's a whole wall of this kind of stuff at a Whole Foods market shown in the video. Processed food. Isn't the point to avoid processed foods as much as meat and dairy? I wonder what unhealthy stuff 's on the labels too, that wasn't mentioned.Why is it necessary to imitate our normal diet anyway? I've been finding the honest diet to be quite attractive once I've sorted through the various versions of it. Good tasty foods and enough variety to allow you your own preferences within the basic program.Imitation foods never work in my experience. I've always avoided "fat free" foods like the plague because they taste terrible. I'd rather give up cheese altogether than eat fake cheese. I'm glad to see that people on Whole Food veganism replace the high fat salad dressings of our normal diet with creative combinations of totally different whole plant foods, some simply restricting the amount of the usual oils, some using whole food fats like nuts and avocados, but some going totally oil-free. (Some of the diets eliminate oil altogether but most of them restrict it stringently at least.)The "real" whole foods plant-based diet is made up of "honest" foods, honest greens, honest potatoes, honest legumes, honest nuts and seeds, and so on, no fakes.Anyway, I'm very taken with this movement and had to share it. See how much I love you?===============================
abe: The "National Geographic Special" film doesn't seem to have anything to do with National Geographic that I can see, or about Raw Food either. It's about a program attended by eight very sick and mostly obese people for 28 days of nothing but vegetable juices. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : Various corrections plus the ABEEdited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.