Joint Pain: Top Natural Remedies - Ted's Q&A

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Shoulder Pain, ACV, Bs and South Beach

Posted by A (The Dominican Republic) on 12/29/2007

Hello Ted, Almost a year ago I started feeling pain in my right shoulder. I live in the Dominican Republic, and I went to several doctors, none which could do a thing. One even injected cortisone in my shoulder join (between the humerus and the shoulder bones). Nothing helps. I am 24 years old, I now look healthy and have a healthy lifestyle, but for over 10 years I was fat, topping 260lbs at a height of 1.78 meters (now 175lbs or so). Over a year ago I started lifting weights, and I love it. I do nothing out of the ordinary, trust me, just the basic movements. But this pain is preventing me to improve my strength, and it just sucks to feel that pain in my everyday life. In September 2007 I traveled to Houston (USA) to meet a doctor I contacted over the internet. He said my problem was in my AC (Acromio-clavicular) joint, and injected cortisone over there (not the same place as the previous doctor!!). Back then, the shoulder felt better too!! And I started lifting again, at first slowly and being super-careful... but then it seemed that with any upper-body exercise (like a pushup (pressing) or a pullup (pulling)), it would hurt a bit the next day. When I lost 50lbs of fat in early-mid 2006, I used South Beach Diet. I was doing this diet to some extent up until recently, when I read a book by Daniel Reid, about Tao. Lately I've been eating according to trophology (food combining), and I feel it's a very healthy way to eat. In that book, as a cure for arthritis, it mentions several things, like celery juice, cherry, grapes, bone powder, etc... it mentions that a diet of strictly grapes for 1-5 days gives a great relief, and today I'm on my second day. I couldn't find black grapes so I'm eating red ones, chewing the seeds and everything before swallowing. I think I ate 4 pounds in 3 meals yesterday, and I'm heading the same direction today it seems. After this, I was thinking of getting back to my normal eating, but including the celery juice and grapes or cherry in my daily life as well. Sometimes I eat a meal of just fruits, so it would be easy for me to keep eating the grapes or cherries. I wanted to ask you what you thought of this? You seem so wise, I just had to e-mail you. I just read you also recommend the ACV+baking soda for arthritis, so I might get back to it right after I finish at least 3-4 days on just grapes. I also read about oil pulling and might start doing it too, since it seems simple and the feedback on it is remarkable. However, in many places I see people recommending fish oil, cod liver oil, glucosamine, MSM, etc.... I am unsure about taking so many products. I don't know if the relief I felt back in September was because of the cortisone shot and inactivity, or if the ACV+baking soda was doing it's thing. To be honest, I'm unsure of what I wish to ask you, except the grape therapy thing... what do you think about this? Is it worth it? I also bought some supplements from VE Irons company (have you heard of it?) in order to perform a 7-day fasting. I wonder if I can handle that many days without solid food and just water and supplements!! but supossedly it cleans the colon very much, and likely the rest of the body too. What do you think of that idea as well? Thank you very much for any answer.

Replied by Ted
Bangkok, Thailand
391 posts

Dear A: You had cortisone shots before and didn't work, so it's not likely taking the shots again helped with the shoulder joint pain. Hence, the reduction in joint pain came from the ACV+baking soda. But to make it go away, I would need magnesium citrate, 500 mg/day taken 5 days out of a week and should go away mostly on the third day and continually taking that for the next 4 or 6 weeks should remove the pain, generally completely. This together with three times a week vitamin B complex, equally spaced.

It should be noted that when working out and doing exercise, most of the water soluble vitamins are lost as well as the minerals, such as vitamin B complex, vitamin C, as are potassium, phosphorous, magnesium and other electrolytes. Hence some electrolyte drinks, magnesium, B complex and vitamin C should helped the most.

Eating grapes, or eating too much of anything is a problem. The seeds are high in thiocyanates, or something they called B17, which tends to reduce the body's available iodine. The high fructose (fruit sugar) tends to slow down the body's ability to heal. Actually it is the fruit sugar that is a problem, but the problems of ribose sugar, fructose sugar, and glucose is not reflected in the South Beach Diet. It is actually worse than sucrose. The other problem is that the South Beach diet only used glycemic index, which doesn't handle the more problem sugar and lumped them in the same category.The other problem is it didn't consider the dietary effects of foods that are acid forming or alkaline forming. An acid forming food will delay the healing but promotes activity while alkaline forming foods accelerates healing, but also promotes relaxation.


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