IN MAY OF 1998, U.S. PUBLIC HEALTH AGENCIES published a sobering status report on arthritis. According to the authors, the prevalence of arthritis is likely to increase sharply, and the disease will afflict almost one in five Americans by early in the twenty-first century. At present, arthritis is the second most common cause of work disability, after heart disease, and affects forty million Americans—a figure that is expected to grow to almost sixty million by the year 2020. In the same report, the Arthritis Foundation’s medical committee chairman stated that “some forms of arthritis may be cured and we may be able to prevent other forms of arthritis.” Sadly, the facts do not bear out this hope.
Arthritis, especially autoimmune varieties such as rheumatoid arthritis, can be among the most difficult diseases to treat successfully. Occasionally, mainstream medicine provides substantial relief—for a minority of cases, over limited periods of time, with adverse side effects. Of course, officially sanctioned therapies are not the only credible options. The news media are full of alternative “cures,” but medical consumers lack the information needed to distinguish the credible from the laughable.
MEDICAL BIASES
Much of what medical doctors know about disease comes from a few mainstream medical journals, reflecting the limited range of research performed by top drug companies, government agencies, and universities. These institutions are absolutely central and critical to the advancement of medical science, but their research priorities do not always evidence an unbiased search for the best, safest, lowest-cost remedies. Instead, they are often driven by funding priorities, academic pursuits, professional politics, and profits. As a result, medical doctors are frequently unaware of promising alternatives. And most physicians lack the time to explore beyond the boundaries of mainstream medicine. Safe therapies that can provide significant benefit to many patients may never even cross your doctor’s radar screen.
THE IMPORTANCE OF “BIO-INDIVIDUALITY”
Physicians rarely give sufficient consideration to one of the central facts of medicine—that people vary widely in their responses to therapies. Individual human beings with similar symptoms and personal characteristics often respond very differently to the same treatments. This accepted medical principle is called bio-individuality, and it is often forgotten in counterproductive debates over the merits of conventional and alternative treatments. Medical authorities will refer to bio-individuality to explain away the shortcomings of synthetic drugs, but they fail to extend the same logic to inconsistencies in the performance of alternative treatments.
In the end, arguments over the superiority of approved versus unapproved treatments are beside the point. Most of the arthritis drugs that are approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) work for only a minority of patients, and most produce adverse effects. Likewise, no alternative remedy will work for all patients—but most are considerably safer than FDA-approved medical drugs. The trick is to find safe treatments that work for you, regardless of their official status. The possibilities are nearly endless; our goal is to help you limit the field to a manageable selection of promising options. In addition to approved drugs, these options should include safe nutritional and natural remedies that have significant scientific backup, a documented history of traditional use, or both.
EXPERIMENTAL THERAPIES
Recent years have borne witness to a boom in research on arthritic diseases. Many of the treatments we will review are considered experimental—that is, substances that have shown promise in research involving animals or people. Unlike the drugs sold in pharmacies and prescribed by doctors, they have not been subjected to the tests the FDA requires before approving any new drug. These requirements include animal and clinical (i.e., human) studies designed to establish a drug’s safety and efficacy. Medical doctors can and do prescribe promising experimental drugs, however, providing they meet one of two sets of criteria: the drug is approved by the FDA as a medicine for any health condition or is legally classified as a dietary supplement (herb, nutrient, etc.) and has a documented history of safe use, including knowledge of potential contraindications or side effects.
Experimental therapies can include vitamins, minerals, foods, herbs, or new synthetic chemicals. No seller of a drug or dietary supplement can make claims of medical efficacy (e.g., “lessens pain of arthritis”) without FDA approval. To gain even the chance of FDA approval, a company has to invest an average of twelve years and $230 million in test-tube, animal, and then human studies.1 This is an enormous risk, since the FDA will withhold approval if the experimental substance falls short in these tests of safety and efficacy.
Drug companies cannot justify such huge risks when it comes to natural substances, which cannot usually be patented. This lack of commercial exclusivity makes it almost impossible for drug companies to recoup the costs of research, development, and regulatory approval. Medical authorities often dismiss the very possibility of efficacious but unapproved alternatives, saying that word of any such remedy would be immediately trumpeted through official channels. In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. None of the alternative therapies we will review—most classified as dietary supplements—currently enjoy FDA approval to be advertised as effective remedies for arthritis. But this says nothing about their safety or efficacy. In fact, some of these remedies are government-sanctioned arthritis drugs in Europe or Asia.
Given the demands on doctors’ time, you cannot expect yours to research all the alternatives. If standard treatments work for you without undue side effects, there may be no compelling reason to explore further. But when speaking among themselves, medical experts freely admit that standard arthritis drugs fail more often than they succeed. The fact that a therapy is classified as “approved” or “unapproved” says surprisingly little about its merits and defects. It would make life easier for patients in search of relief, but the truth is more complicated than that.
If the approved remedies fall short for you and your doctor is unwilling to help you explore alternative therapies, don’t go it alone. Find another doctor who is willing to serve as an open-minded guide and medical guardian. This volume is intended to provide information useful in a journey toward better health—take charge of yours. You have everything to gain and nothing to lose but pain.