What causes Arthritis?
There seems to be no clear-cut answer to this question.  Arthritis refers to inflammation of the joints.  Osteoarthritis is considered to be caused primarily by wear and tear on the joints, which happens to many of us as we grow older.

Osteoarthritis mainly affects the load bearing joints; the spine, hips and knees.  While it is thought of as an old people's disease, it can also appear after injury or infection, at any age.  Rheumatoid arthritis is more a younger person's disease and affects more women than men, between the ages of 20 and 40.  Usually thought to be an auto-immune disease, it can affect any joint, including fingers, wrists and toes.

Conventional treatment usually consists of controlling the symptoms with drugs.   Front line drug therapy for osteoarthritis is usually NSAIDs (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs) like aspirin and ibuprofen, plus the newer ‘safer for stomach’ types.  These are also used for rheumatoid arthritis, often along with steroids and anti-rheumatic drugs like gold, methotrexate and sulphasalazine.  All these drugs have side effects, many serious enough to threaten the health of the patient.  The safest conventional drug is enteric coated aspirin, which does not dissolve in the stomach.  Conventional arthritis treatment is still a hit and miss affair and doesn't have a very good track record.  Bearing this in mind it is worth trying alternative treatments to see if they help you.

Although arthritis is often described as an auto-immune disease, recent research suggests that the body may be reacting against allergens, rather than against itself.  Arthritis may be linked to food allergies, environmental pollutants, and nutrition.  The fact is that it is in these areas where alternative practitioners report the highest successes in treating this condition.  

Some arthritis sufferers who have food allergies, are helped by making simple changes to their diet.  The people who do not respond to small dietary changes could have a more complex range of food allergies, environmental allergies to inhaled substances, or sensitivities to ingested chemicals/food additives.  A visit to a clinical ecologist can help locate the source of the allergies and give suggestions on how to eliminate them.  A clinical ecologist is a doctor who believes that your health is affected by what you eat and your lifestyle, not just by germs.  The time to consider nutritional and environmental causes is early on in the disease, before the possibility of your inner healing system being compromised by years of taking NSAIDs and cortisone-derived drugs.

A reduction in the symptoms of arthritis can be obtained by medically supervised fasting followed by an individually adjusted vegetarian diet.  Besides foods, some of the most common allergy triggers are: house dust mites and moulds, smoking and intestinal candidiasis

The Dong Diet
Dr Collin H. Dong, himself a victim of arthritis, developed a "caveman" diet to deal with his own arthritis.  Within a few months he was free of his symptoms and returned to playing golf, which at age 85, he still enjoyed. The 'Dong diet' avoids meat, fruits (including tomatoes), dairy products, vinegar and other acids, all varieties of pepper, hot spices, chocolate, dry roasted nuts, alcohol, including wine, soft drinks, and all additives, preservatives and chemicals, particularly monosodium glutamate. The Dong diet avoids many common allergens, including the artificial ones like additives, preservatives and chemicals, which are probably the worst offenders This diet is naturally high in fish, and fish oils are thought to be particularly good for arthritis sufferers.

The Mayan Indians
Rheumatoid arthritis is virtually unknown among the Mayan Indians and various tribes of the North West Amazon, who eat ripe avocado pears almost every day.