Lately I have become more focused on sharing knowledge, particularly knowledge that I think may help people improve their lives. Concomitant with this increased focus, I have begun to feel the need to share such information as quickly as possible after it becomes apparent to me. This is still largely theoretical in my life, but I am taking small steps to make it more habitual, and this is one of those steps.
I want to share a couple of “home-baked” remedies that apparently have been very helpful in clearing up some chronic health problems that I have had.
Over the last few years, in researching my own health problems, one of the themes that seemed to me to be a likely common underlying factor is Inflammation. The medical community has made some steps in the direction of recognizing inflammation as a risk factor in some previously unrecognized areas such as heart disease, but overall my gut feeling is that there is much more to learn.
I suffered psoriasis on my toes for years. It probably first was triggered by a case of athletes foot that kept recurring and eventually stopped responding to anti-fungals. The next step was to use steroidal cream. This helped for awhile but it came back again and would not go away completely, roaring back to life whenever my feet were hottest and sweatiest. After a lot of research I decided to try a multi-pronged approach. In the morning I would take a dab of steroidal cream and mix it with a dab of anti-fungal cream and spread it on the affected area. At night I miixed a half cap full of hydrogen peroxide with a half cap full of apple cider vinegar and dabbed it on with cotton-swab sticks. I used the raw unfiltered vinegar from Braggs. The psoriasis cleared up after about a month and has not come back.
My dad had quite bad rheumatoid arthritis in his fingers and back for much his life, so when I started to develop some swelling and stiffness in a couple of finger joints I became concerned and went into research mode once again. I came up with the following-
1/2 to 1 ounce of cherry juice concentrate. Knudsen’s also has a tart cherry juice in non-concentrate form that I have also used (you don’t use water with this, just juice).
1 tablespoon virgin olive oil
1 teaspoon liquid lecithin
2 shakes of Turmeric powder
1 heaping tablespoon of psyllium husks
Mix in 9-10 ounces of water and drink twice a day for 4- 5 weeks. Taking this tonic seems to correlate perfectly with the disappearance of my joint pain and swelling and hemorhoids. After a month, I cut down to a maintenance dose of 1 serving, 3-4 days per week. This has held me in good stead now for 6 months.
The cherry juice and turmeric are known anti-inflammatories. I include the olive oil for general heart health and the lecithin is mostly for it’s emulsifying effects but it is also a good source of choline. The inclusion of psyllium husks is a little bit more theoretical on my part. For years I had suffered from hemorrhoids, even though I am very active physically, as well as having irregular bowl movements. I suspected a connection between my apparent bowel inflammation and my arthritis, so decided it might be good to try and clean out my plumbing. If nothing else, it has brought back regularity, if not also involved in taming my arthritis and hemorrhoids.
Another aspect of my health regimen could have also had a hand in the above results. I have taken fish oil capsules for years now for cardiovascular and brain health. The arthritis came on whileI was taking 1 1000 mg capsule each day. I upped this to 3 capsules at the time of taking the first “tonic” treatment, and I have continued at that level as the science just keeps piling up in favor of Omega 3 fatty acid supplementation.
Here’s to your health!
Tags: Anti-inflammatories, Community Service, Health, Home Health Remedies, Inflammation, Knowledge Sharing, Service to Others
