Anti-inflammatory Foods for Arthritis

Cabbage poultice, capsaicin creams, and ibuprofen are good first aids for arthritis, but it’s a chronic condition that requires chronic treatment.  The problem is chronic inflammation in the body, affecting particular joints.  Other diseases, like heart disease and diabetes, are also caused or exacerbated by inflammation, so if one can get inflammation well controlled, one can be much healthier.

            The first arthritis-stopping food that I became acquainted with was cayenne pepper.  An old man in Arizona told me that he used to have arthritis so bad that he could hardly move his fingers; at the time I met him, his hands worked fine, panning gold in cold water.  He said that he stopped it with a teaspoon of cayenne a day, chugged quickly in a small glass of tomato juice.  He said that it took a month to take effect, and a month to wear off when he discontinued it.

            Some years later, I got hit with arthritis pain in my hip—an incredible stabbing, grinding pain I’d never felt before.  I used cabbage poultice on it for a few days, but immediately started taking cayenne, ½ teaspoon in a small tomato juice.  It gave me heartburn.  Cayenne pills came apart on the way down and burned in my esophagus.  I eventually found that ¼ teaspoon in a tall glass of orange juice (with a shot of Knudsen’s Just Cranberry juice for my bladder; I call it Crazy Juice) did not give me heartburn, though it’s a spicy drink.  It only took a week for the pain to completely go away; I was not as advanced a case as the old man.

            Since then, I’ve used other anti-inflammatory foods known to keep arthritis at bay.  I’ve been using more black cherry and tart cherry juice lately than Crazy Juice; I got that remedy from the People’s Pharmacy column in the Oregonian.  I mix a cup of juice half-and-half with Mountain Dew; it tones down the richness of Knudsen’s Just Black Cherry and Just Tart Cherry, and lends a sparkle to the taste, taking off the vegetable edge.

            Turmeric also keeps coming up in the People’s Pharmacy as a powerful anti-inflammatory.  It is the yellow colored spice in mustard, relish, pickles, and curry powder, among other uses.  I don’t like curry, but I put a ¼ teaspoon of turmeric with the ½ teaspoon of cinnamon in the sesame-oatmeal cookies that, along with cashews and dried apples, are a staple of my mid-day diet, and I also eat the occasional sweet pickle or my homemade zucchini relish.

            Still, cayenne in Crazy Juice seems to be most effective for me.  If I leave it out of my diet for long, I start getting odd pains in my joints, and soreness in my vulnerable hip—they just started up again yesterday.

Toothaches, Tumors, and Cabbage

The first time I used cabbage on a toothache, it hit me like the kick of a mule. I took 800 mg of ibuprofen, and then put a piece of cabbage about 2 inches wide on the nearest cheek, binding it with a 2” Ace bandage, chin to crown. The pain immediately began to lessen, and in the morning, it was gone. I used cabbage on and off for several days whenever it got sore, until I saw a dentist who said that I needed a root canal and wanted to give me antibiotics for a week first to reduce the infection. I told him that I had my own antibiotics; I would keep cabbage on the cheek and garlic oil in the nearest ear (more on garlic oil later); and I would see him in a week.

The cabbage poultice would stay on my head only when I was awake. (Years later, I figured out how to keep one on when sleeping, by putting a stocking cap over it.) Within the week the infection was practically gone, and cabbage had kept me pain-free for 11 days. I used ibuprofen on that first mule-kick only.

This has been repeated by me and others. A toothache can be stopped and killed, but the damaged tooth will keep getting infected until it is drilled and filled or pulled. Toothache occurs when the rot in a cavity has reached a nerve; it usually requires a root canal or pulling.

The only time I used cabbage to reduce a tumor was when my late husband was undergoing whole-brain radiation after having an egg-sized melanoma tumor removed from his head. There was another egg-sized tumor in his thigh that the doctors could feel, but they decided to leave that one for chemotherapy, to begin the following month. The leg hurt; I put cabbage on it and kept doing so whenever it hurt. (He ate slippery elm in applesauce to keep the radiation from harming his gut.)   By the end of that month, when he went to see the chemo specialist, the tumor in his thigh could not be found.

He began chemotherapy, which was worse on his system than most people; where most get diarrhea, he got constipated. Neither cabbage nor slippery elm would relieve the pain nor move his bowels; it took mineral oil.  His belly filled with tumors, most likely caused by the chemo, which cabbage could not touch. He died within 6 months of starting chemo, after 3 treatments in three months.

If I ever get cancer, I'll eat a lot of coleslaw and put cabbage poultice on anything that hurts (See Rycke's Remedies: If it hurts, put cabbage on it). And I'll eat a lot of almond flour. See World Without Cancer, the movie or the book, about vitamin B17.

                       Revised at News-You-Can-Use-by-Rycke.blogspot.com. 

Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener       541-955-9040      rycke@gardener.com

If it hurts, put cabbage on it

      If it hurts, as a general rule, I put cabbage on it.  There are exceptions to this rule: don’t put cabbage on inflamed skin; it will make it worse.  But anything under the skin is fair game.  I’ve used cabbage to good effect on: strains; sprains; toothache; back pain; abscesses; bot fly maggots; mastitis; surgery incisions; tumors; and even painful lungs with flu.  At a family reunion a few years back, I found that it is used in the South to stop inflammation from over-full breasts while weaning.

Cutting the head in half cross-wise makes it easier to take leaves off the top for poulticing.  Use the lower half for eating.

The book that I got the remedy from, Organic Garden Medicine (by Dr. Jean Valnet, Erbonia Books, New Platz, New York, 1975), had three cases of it curing gangrene, both traumatic and arteriosclerotic.  It was terse in its treatment of most plants, only devoting ½ to 1½ pages to each; cabbage got 20 pages.    

Cabbage laid out for a large poultice, ready to fold and roll.

The first time I used cabbage on a toothache, it hit like the kick of a mule.  I took 800 mg of ibuprofen, and then put a piece of cabbage about 2” wide on the nearest cheek with a 2” Ace bandage, wrapped from chin to crown.  The pain immediately began to lessen, and in the morning, it was gone.  I used it on and off for several days as it got sore, until I saw a dentist who said that I needed a root canal and wanted to give me antibiotics for a week first to reduce the infection.  I told him that I had my own antibiotics; that I would keep cabbage on the cheek and garlic oil in the nearest ear (more on garlic oil later); and I would see him in a week.  The cabbage poultice would only stay on my head during the day, but within the week the infection was practically gone, and cabbage had kept me pain-free for 11 days.

Folded and flattened with a rolling pin.

To make a cabbage poultice: take cabbage leaves; cut the big ribs out of the middle; flatten the rest with a rolling pin or bottle; and put it on the part that hurts with an elastic bandage.  For larger poultices and on thin skin, one may spread the leaves out on a paper towel before flattening and fold the paper towel over it to make it easier to apply; the cabbage will work through the paper; cheese cloth would work as well.    On the thicker skin of the face and hands, it will absorb better and stick better without the paper towel; on thin skin, the paper towel can protect against irritation.  Overlapping the cabbage makes it last longer.

Laid on a 6" Ace bandage for back poultice.  Back up to the table to pull it onto the back; wind it around and pin it.

Cabbage is a member of the mustard family.  It’s a strong remedy; don’t overdo the crushing when you roll it.  One person thought it would work better if she put it through a blender; she burned the heck out of her shin.  Don’t put the bandage on too tight, either.  If it hurts more after you put it on, it’s wound too tight; rewind it looser.  Change it when it starts to get irritating as it dries out, usually within 8 hours; more often if it is a bad infection.  For long-term use, leave it off for 8 hours per day to rest the skin.

                                            

Double back and front poultice laid out for treating a bladder infection.  Pull the end poultice on the back; turn and pull on the front to wind, adjusting the position of the poultices before winding the rest on.

        Like any antibiotic, cabbage can be overused and cause immunity in particular bacteria.  But its anti-inflammatory effect remains effective and useful for stopping pain, and in the case of bladder infection, keeps one's urine flowing freely.
                                                           Revised at News-You-Can-Use-by-Rycke.blogspot.com.