ARTHRITIS WITH JAMES SLOANE
Video Transcript
ARTHRITIS WITH JAMES SLOANE
NUTRITION LIST FOR ARTHRITIS
CONTENTS — FIND IN PAGE
ADDRESSING ARTHRITIS, PAIN & STRESS
IMPORTANCE OF VITAMIN C, SILICA, AND GELATIN
AUTOIMMUNE/RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS & ADRENALS
TREATMENT FOR RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
IMPORTANCE OF VITAMIN D, VITAMIN K2 AND CALCIUM
{VIDEO TRANSCRIPT below with section headings added}
JAMES SLOANE’S BACKGROUND
_MR: You'll never guess who I got back! Some of you will recognize this guy — he's one of the most insane geniuses I've ever met, James Sloan. He's the hardest guy in the world to get hold of. Don't ask me how to get hold of him, because it took me five years to get him back. We're going to do a couple of videos here, starting today with arthritis. James worked in the medical field in the ER and things like that, and got tired of the whole system and went into more natural healing. Tell them a little bit about that.
_JS: Yeah, I started in medicine. I was 14 years old, working over at the hospital. At the age of 15, I passed a state EMT exam, but they couldn't certify me at that age because it wasn't legal — you had to be 17 minimum, and I was 15. Long story short, I argued with them, and they finally let me work the emergency room without my certificate. So I was working ER when I was 15. I learned live-in phlebotomy when I was 16, and EKG when I was 18. Everywhere I went, they kept telling them to teach me everything they could, and they did.
And I kept going, until after 13 years in allopathic medicine, I got fed up with the corruption and lots and lots of stupidity, because I saw doctors and other medical personnel who were either injuring or ending up killing people because of their stupidity. So I started transitioning over into holistic medicine, and I've been in holistic medicine ever since — so a total of 44 years now I've been in medicine. You have more scientific knowledge than I have ever seen anybody have. So let's just dive right into it and impress these people with what you know.
ABOUT ARTHRITIS
_MR: Today's topic is arthritis. I think that's very common with most people on some level. I mean, there's thousands of different ways that it can affect you. People think it's just stiff joints, but it affects everything. It literally means inflammation of the joint, so 'arth' meaning joint and '-itis' is a suffix meaning inflammation. So it's inflammation of the joint.
_JS: There's actually about 120 different forms of arthritis, and most people are familiar with osteoarthritis and of course, there's rheumatoid arthritis. But a lot of people don't understand there are other forms, like costochondritis, for example. Gout is actually a form of arthritis. Anything that inflames the joint is considered arthritis. Just like with hepatitis, for example — everybody thinks viral, but there's actually multiple different types of that type of inflammation, too, which can mean liver. 'Itis' just means inflammation of — so it can be viral, bacterial, fungal, traumatic, or chemical. It's not as simple as one form; it's like many forms.
_MR: So where do you want to start with arthritis? What do you see happening out there? What's the biggest—
COMMON TYPES OF ARTHRITIS
_JS: Let's jump into the two most common types. The two most common again will be osteoarthritis, and then there's rheumatoid arthritis — very, very different diseases.
Osteoarthritis is considered what's called a 'wear-and-tear' disease. Injuries and stuff over a period of time, or even lack of certain nutrients like silica, for example, can lead to inflammation of the joint. And so you get deterioration of the joint in the case of osteoarthritis, leading to the inflammation.
Rheumatoid arthritis is what's considered an autoimmune disorder. Autoimmunity is basically adrenal dysfunction, and that leads to an overproduction of what's called low-affinity or non-specific antibodies. They're also called autoantibodies, the other name for them. Yeah, these antibodies — what they're trying to do is they're trying to attack some type of usually on some microbe, like in the case of rheumatoid arthritis it's actually bacteria, it's a chlamydia bacteria — not the sexually transmitted form of chlamydia but a relative of that. The chlamydia bacteria is actually the triggering agent, and then these autoantibodies being non-specific are attempting to attack that bacteria. But they mistake the joint tissue — the healthy tissue — as the bacteria and tag it for destruction by the white blood cells.
So the immune system is actually doing its job as it's supposed to do. The problem is you got this abundance of low-affinity or non-specific antibodies that are mistaking healthy tissue for foreign tissue and therefore get attacked and destroyed. There's lots of different symptoms that result from this that people have now. You can get sore joints and things like that, but there's — I mean there's things that affect you all over as a result of this.
ADDRESSING ARTHRITIS, PAIN & STRESS
_MR: How can people tell what they have, and what should they do about it?
_JS: People don't normally think of pain as being stress, but it is a form of stress. And so stress affects the adrenal glands. You know, stress the adrenal glands — you end up with other problems, like you'll elevate your blood sugar, for example. You get an elevation of cortisol, releases glycogen from the liver, and that's going to raise your blood sugar levels. And it's going to raise your blood pressure through epinephrine.
If you tax the adrenals too long, you can end up with things like allergies, asthma, other autoimmune disorders. So yeah, pain is a form of stress, so that ends up leading to all these secondary little side effects. Most problems that people have is usually from something that they're constantly doing day after day after day. It's like a habit that they have, it's a food that they eat, the lifestyle, the physical things, whatever lack of stuff they have. Going to a doctor — they're just going to give them non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) — that's not the answer. The answer is look at your life and say, what is it that you're doing every day? It never goes down — you never get a rest. So you're wearing yourself out on so many levels. And ironic, adrenals produce your anti-inflammatory hormones like cortisol. So by taxing your adrenals, you end up in this little vicious cycle of going downhill — end up with more inflammation. Chronic fatigue syndrome is actually — you know the word syndrome, syndromes aren't diseases — they are a group of symptoms. So anytime you see syndrome, it doesn't mean a specific disease — like even AIDS is acquired immune deficiency syndrome. So it's not a disease, it is a group of symptoms, which means you have more than one cause.
CAFFEINE & ADRENAL CRASH
So the caffeine — if you do energy drinks and stuff — the caffeine actually crashes your adrenals, and the adrenals are what maintain most of your energy. Because again, epinephrine, which is a new term for adrenaline — we haven't used adrenaline in like, I don't know, 20–30 years, something like that, but some people still do — is the current term for that. And so it helps to maintain our energy, our alertness, and so on. As you crash your adrenals — like there's people who will drink a cup of coffee and they go right to sleep like that — it's because they crash their adrenals. There's not enough epinephrine to maintain their energy. So when they take that coffee, it uses up that last little bit of epinephrine because the adrenals aren't keeping up with production of it, and you have nothing to maintain your energy in your house. Even your morning coffee can contribute ultimately to your arthritis because it's crashing your adrenals.
AVOID NSAID'S
When people feel stiffer as they get older — they've got shoulder pain, neck pain, hip pain — where do they start? First of all, stay away from the non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, referred to as NSAIDs. These include aspirin, ibuprofen (which would be like Motrin, Nuprin, and so on). Then there's silicoxib (Celebrex), naproxen (Aleve). All these drugs will reduce inflammation — that's why they are called non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs. They reduce the inflammation, but they actually end up damaging the cartilage in the long term. You can actually lose cartilage, making the arthritis worse. So you're masking a symptom while making the underlying condition worse.
Then you also risk things like heart attack, stroke, kidney failure, liver failure. Now, those four right there do not require long-term use, nor do they require an overdose — those can all occur from a single recommended dose of those drugs. That's something you don't realize. The way they work is you have hormones called prostaglandins. There are series one, two, and three prostaglandins; different ones do different functions. Some of them are inflammatory prostaglandins, and some of them produce the lining of your stomach to help protect from stomach acid enzymes. Anyway, prostaglandins — let's say if I were spraining my wrist, for example — prostaglandins will open up the blood supply to this area by dilating the blood vessels. Now, the problem is, when you over-dilate — like say, here's a normal blood vessel — as you over-dilate the blood vessels, you get these little holes through your blood vessels. They leak fluid into the surrounding tissue, and that causes the swelling and the pain.
What the NSAIDs do is they counter these prostaglandins to constrict down your blood vessels to keep them from leaking. But by constricting the blood vessels, you can also cut off the blood supply to critical organs like the heart, the brain, the liver, and the kidneys. So people with certain diseases in particular, like diabetes (because they've already got vasoconstriction due to the insulin), or people with congestive heart failure, or Raynaud's Syndrome or Disease — all those conditions and stuff — you can take a single NSAID at a recommended dose and still develop a heart attack, a stroke, or liver or kidney failure. For instance, during clinical trials of ibuprofen, they actually had two dozen deaths from chemically induced, or ibuprofen-induced, hepatitis. So they are extremely dangerous drugs in that respect. And then outside of that, they can also cause loss of vision, tinnitus, and — as I mentioned — cartilage loss.
FIND THE ROOT CAUSE
_MR: Well, the answer is not to take pills or medication to hide the symptoms. The answer is to figure out what the cause is, right? And stop doing that. As far as the natural things that make your blood vessels relax or expand, the thing is — the reason there's the holes in there is because your collagen is falling apart, right? Why? Because of the unhealthy lifestyle and diet, and the matrix isn't holding together.
_JS: Varicose veins and blood leaking into the system are because you're low in vitamin C and silica. Yeah, those are two most important nutrients, and they won't even absorb in your body if your stomach acid isn't strong enough.
_MR: There's so many directions we could go. Why is your stomach acid not strong enough? Why? Because you're taking calcium pills, or alkaline water, or all that stuff, or because of too much sugar and bread. I mean, the causes are endless.
_JS: I think really what people need to look at is: what are you doing that you know is not healthy and natural? Are you eating processed food, junk food, or inflammatory oils in your food? Are you stressed? Are you not going to sleep early enough? Is your relationship stressing you? There's so many things.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Well, depending on the type of arthritis, they're treated differently because of the different aspects. Again, rheumatoid arthritis being bacterial autoimmune is vastly different than osteoarthritis. So we can cover the two most common forms of arthritis, because a lot of the other forms of arthritis will fall under one of those two — either autoimmune, or some type of injury or whatever. Let's start with osteoarthritis, because again, this is a wear-and-tear disease. Now, what happens in this case usually is over time we end up losing strength in the cartilage, again due to a lack of structural proteins — particularly the collagen. Then there's the chondroitin and glucosamine — a lot of people are familiar with those. But you have your collagen matrix as well in there, which gives the strength to the tissue.
SILICA, VITAMIN C & GELATIN
Collagen is made up of amino acids — you've got glycine, proline, hydroxyproline, lysine, hydroxylisine. And then you've got your silica and vitamin C. These are primary components of collagen. The other structural protein would be elastin, which — in the case of cartilage — we're not really worried about. It's the collagen in this case. Elastin would be for the rest of the tissues in the body like bone, blood vessels, and so on. Silica and vitamin C are the two most important nutrients as far as that goes, and you have to have that to get your basic structure — your cartilage. Then we have glucosamine and chondroitin. Now, all of these are going to involve silica. Now all of these are going to involve silica. So you've got your collagen again; you have your silica molecules as part of it. But when you get into glucosamine and chondroitin, which as far as supplements go, they're basically worthless. I'm not a big fan of them — they take forever to kick in for number one, and two, they're very poorly absorbed.
The reason for this is glucosamine is a very, very large molecule. You're not going to absorb it intact; it has to be broken down into its components. So you've got your glucose, you've got your amino acids — it gets absorbed, and then from there, some of it gets converted back to glucosamine. The rest of it is going to get used elsewhere, whereas the glucose can be burned up as energy, stored as glycogen, or whatever. Then your amino acids can be used again for structural proteins or other things in the body. Now, chondroitin is basically glucosamine with a silica molecule — glucosamine and a silica molecule into this big, long chain. Again, it can't be absorbed properly, so it has to be broken down into individual glucosamine units. Then those glucosamine units have to be broken down into glucose and amino acids, and then it gets absorbed. Again, only a very, very tiny fraction converts back into chondroitin. This is why people take glucosamine and chondroitin — it generally takes about four months to even start seeing results. It's pretty much worthless. Really, if people want to, they can always use something like gelatin. Gelatin is a source of glucosamine and chondroitin. As far as I'm concerned, it's better than the supplements of glucosamine and chondroitin you get, because this way you get some other amino acids and stuff in there. So this is one thing that can be done — you can substitute with that.
But silica is still the number one most important because you've got to build the collagen. You've got to build the chondroitin in the joint, and silica is what's required for that. Silica, which is silicon dioxide or sand — you know, people usually think, Well, that's bad for the body. Like, no, it isn't. If you inhale it, okay, that's a different story. We're not inhaling — we're ingesting it. It's a very, very important part of structural proteins within the body. Silica does not absorb as silica, though — it has to convert to what's called orthosilic acid. Orthosilic acid is actually formed by the reaction of silica with water. So when we ingest this silica or silicon, it's something that's going to convert into orthosilic acid. Now, in the presence of an acid like stomach acid, that conversion is even higher.
STOMACH ACID AGAIN
So if you have low stomach acid, you're not going to convert as much of the silicon dioxide to orthosilic acid, and therefore, it won't absorb. Stomach acid starts decreasing after the age of 20 for everybody, so you want to make sure that you increase your stomach acid. There are betaine hydrochloride or HCL supplements, but you can also use apple cider vinegar or lemon water — something like that — to acidify the stomach so you can absorb silica to build structural proteins. Some people can't do acidic things — they can't drink acidic things because it bothers their teeth or something. So yeah, you can use a straw, number one. But the acidity is not going to stay in your mouth long enough to cause damage to your teeth — that's a bunch of garbage.
_MR: So yeah, you can use a straw to bypass it. But you know, people are walking around here drinking sodas and all these other things, and that's not bothering their teeth. So why is lemon water going to bother your teeth? That's just people being stupid — that's all that is. And I'm not trying to be mean about it, it's just some people don't think. They hear things and then they just repeat it and repeat it, and they don't actually think about it.
_JS: You need the silica, but you also need to have proper stomach acid to absorb it. So yeah, you can use a little bit of lemon water, apple cider vinegar, or you can get HCL supplements to help with stomach acid levels. There's also another thing with HCL supplements that most people don't understand — you have to take it with food, or else it will burn a hole through your stomach. But you have to have protein. There are people taking the HCL supplement thinking that's going to increase their stomach acid so they can absorb more minerals from their supplements. Minerals don't require stomach acid to absorb — they require bile salts. So they're taking the wrong thing for the wrong reason. Taking an HCL supplement is only going to increase your structural protein production or increase the amount of silica you absorb.
VITAMIN C AGAIN
Also, vitamin C is very important for a number of things. It creates the bonds between the collagen itself and other things. For example, if you have low vitamin C, you end up with varicose veins. The collagen around the capillaries in the blood vessels breaks down, and so it leads to varicose veins where the blood vessels leak. Also, vitamin C increases stomach acid levels as well. It's very safe, unlike taking the HCL supplements. The other thing is, vitamin C is not just ascorbic acid — aspartic acid is only one tiny component of vitamin C. So a lot of people are taking ascorbic acid thinking that's vitamin C, and that's not vitamin C. Vitamin C is a complex — there's a whole bunch of different components to it. If you're just taking ascorbic acid, you're missing out on the other beneficial compounds, because some of the other beneficial compounds like rutin, for example, help to seal off the blood vessels to keep you from leaking.
So that's something that's very important to consider when you're getting your vitamin C. You want to make sure it's a complex vitamin C and not just ascorbic acid. In that case, as far as dosing goes, vitamin C is generally 2,000 to 3,000 milligrams a day to start off with. Then you can increase the dose as needed, because vitamin C is what's called bowel tolerance. What happens is as you're taking it — you're taking a thousand milligrams, then you increase it to two thousand, three thousand, four thousand. Eventually, you're going to get to a point where you get diarrhea. When you get diarrhea, you back down your dose until you don't have diarrhea anymore. That's bowel tolerance. This is different than magnesium, for example. Everybody says magnesium causes diarrhea. Magnesium doesn't cause diarrhea. What happens is magnesium pulls water from the body into the colon, which softens the stool and makes it easier to pass. So it's not actually causing diarrhea. Of course, if you get too much water in the colon, then yeah, it's going to cause diarrhea, but it's not the same mechanism as vitamin C. So they're two completely different things. With the vitamin C, you can increase that dose as needed to bowel tolerance without any problems.
IMPORTANCE OF VITAMIN C, SILICA, AND GELATIN
Vitamin C and the silica are going to be the two most important. Then, of course, gelatin is good to add in there as well if people don't want to use the glucosamine chondroitin supplements because they're basically worthless. As far as foods go, the silica is going to be found in leafy green vegetables, cucumbers, celery, bell peppers, tomatoes — those types of things. You can also get it from whole grains as well, like oats, brown rice, barley, things like that. Silica is really important for your overall structure, not just with the cartilage. The cartilage just happens to be one of the first places where you notice the effects. Again, it's not just oh, your joints hurt, and so on. Silica is important for every single tissue in your body, from your skin, to your hair, to your blood vessels, to your bones, to your organs, to your cartilage. Everything requires silica.
AUTOIMMUNE/RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS & ADRENALS
Then we have the autoimmune form of arthritis, which is rheumatoid arthritis. That one's vastly different. Rheumatoid arthritis is autoimmunity, which is adrenal exhaustion and also a chlamydia infection. What happens is the adrenals will become exhausted due to some type of long-term stress — pain, lifestyle, foods, emotions, whatever — and as you exhaust the adrenals, the adrenal gland produces a number of different hormones. You've got aldosterone, which regulates the blood pressure; cortisol, which regulates inflammation and also blood sugar levels; epinephrine/adrenaline, which maintains energy and alertness; and then you have your sex hormones as well. Those are the four primary hormones produced by the adrenal glands.
Now, if you exhaust the adrenals, it affects the production of all those hormones — not just one, it affects all of them. So, as you exhaust the adrenals, it leads to an overproduction of what's called low-affinity or non-specific antibodies, also called autoantibodies. These antibodies are trying to attack some type of pathogen, usually a microbe. Now, in the case of rheumatoid arthritis, it's actually a bacteria — a chlamydia bacteria, but it's not the sexually transmitted form; it's a relative of that. This chlamydia bacteria is the triggering agent. Now the antibodies, being non-specific, are trying to attack the bacteria, but they mistake the joint tissue — the healthy tissue — as the bacteria and tag it for destruction by the white blood cells. So, the immune system is actually doing its job as it's supposed to do. The problem is, you've got this abundance of low-affinity or non-specific antibodies that are mistaking healthy tissue for foreign tissue and therefore indicate it should be attacked and destroyed.
TREATMENT FOR RHEUMATOID ARTHRITIS
To treat this, you basically want to focus on a number of different things: Eradicate the bacteria; Rebuild the adrenals; Address any other nutrient deficiencies. As far as eradicating the bacteria goes, there's a number of different things you can use. One of the main things is oregano oil. Now, oregano oil is a very, very strong natural antibiotic. What you want to do with that is you want to take it sublingually, which means underneath the tongue. When you swallow it, it goes through the liver and gets filtered out, so you lose a lot of it. You want to take it sublingually. It's going to burn; it's going to taste horrible, but that's how you're going to absorb it properly. You can do that a couple times a day; I usually do it once or twice a day.
Now if you have little kids and stuff, you're not going to get them to do that. It's just too strong for them. So, in that case, you can always apply it topically to the skin, and it will absorb through the skin as well. But you're going to get a much higher absorption rate with the sublingual administration. Another thing you can use to eradicate the chlamydia bacteria is colloidal silver. Colloidal silver is basically silver particles suspended in water. Silver is a very, very strong natural antibiotic as well, and you can take that orally, or you can use it nebulized as well to breathe it in if you want to get it directly into the lungs.
Another thing is monolaurin. Monolaurin is derived from coconut oil, and it's very, very effective at killing a lot of different types of bacteria, viruses, and fungi. You can take that orally as well. Those are three things you can do to help eradicate the bacteria. Of course, you can do antibiotics as well from the doctor, but I'm not a big fan of antibiotics because they kill off the beneficial bacteria as well as the harmful bacteria. So, I always recommend trying the natural remedies first and see if that works before you start going into the antibiotics.
IMPORTANCE OF VITAMIN D, VITAMIN K2 AND CALCIUM
Another thing that's very important is vitamin D. Vitamin D is very, very important for a number of different things. It's not just for bone density and calcium absorption. It actually helps the immune system to properly identify foreign tissue, so it can lower the chances of an autoimmune reaction in the first place. Vitamin D is also one of the most common nutrient deficiencies out there. Everybody's low in vitamin D because we're all staying indoors all the time. So, you really want to get your vitamin D levels checked and see where you're at. You want to bring them up to the optimal levels. If you are supplementing with vitamin D, you want to make sure you're also supplementing with vitamin K2 because vitamin D will increase calcium absorption, but it doesn't tell the calcium where to go. So you can end up with calcification in the arteries, calcification in the organs, things like that. You want to take the vitamin K2 to direct the calcium to the proper places, like the bones and the teeth.
ROLE OF MAGNESIUM & FASTING
Addressing any other nutrient deficiencies, magnesium is very, very important because magnesium is required for about 300 different enzymatic processes in the body. It's one of the most common nutrient deficiencies. Magnesium is what helps to relax your muscles, and muscle tension actually causes a lot of problems with arthritis. You'll find a lot of people with arthritis will have a lot of muscle tension as well. So the magnesium will help to relax those muscles and help to pull the water into the colon to soften the stool. These are some different things you can do for that.
Now also, another thing I want to mention is with the autoimmune form, you can do fasting. Fasting is really good for this because when you fast, the body will start to break down and recycle damaged tissue. With autoimmunity, you have a lot of damaged tissue, so the fasting will really help to break down that damaged tissue and recycle it. So that's something that's really good to do with the autoimmune form of arthritis.
SUMMARY
So those are just some of the things you can do. I mean, there's a whole bunch of different things you can do, but those are some of the main things you want to focus on. So you've got, you know, for osteoarthritis, you want to focus on building cartilage with the silica, vitamin C, gelatin, those types of things. And then with the rheumatoid arthritis, the autoimmune form, you want to eradicate the bacteria, rebuild the adrenals, and address any other nutrient deficiencies. So those are the main things you want to focus on.