ARTHRITIS: THE MAINSTAY OF THE "HEALTH INDUSTRY"

THE DISEASE THAT "HEALTH" AUTHORITIES DON'T WANT CURED

by Rex Newnham, Ph.D., D.O., N.D.

Arthritis and its close relative osteoporosis affect about 30% of all people today. The latter is responsible for more long term hospital cases that any other single cause. Yet the answer has been found over twenty years ago, and the efforts of the health authorities have been to suppress this remedy. We must remember that no man can cure any disease, but of we give the body adequate nutrients and conditions then it will cure itself.

I was not a medical man, but a teacher of soil science, chemistry and agricultural botany. Thirty years ago I developed arthritis and was given drugs that did not help the condition. There is a cause for every effect and I soon realized that I should seek the cause of my arthritis. I soon realized that the fruit and vegetables, and probably wheat and meat were mineral deficient, due to the lack of minerals in the sandy soils around Perth in Australia.

All the common minerals were checked and none was relevant, but the mineral boron which was deficient was written off as not needed by man or animal. But I knew that boron was needed by plants and that it aided calcium metabolism in plants. I looked into the effect of boron and 45--60grams was a dangerous dose. It has about the same toxicity as sodium chloride. So I took less than one thousandth of this dangerous dose, namely 30 mg of sodium tetraborate. In three weeks all pain, swelling and stiffness had gone. I was cured with no side effects.

Then I told the university medical school people and the public health authorities but nobody was interested. Then I told a few people who had arthritis and they were thrilled as they were getting better. It meant that they buy a packet of chemical that was labelled "poison - for killing cockcroaches and ants". Some people believed the label and stayed with their arthritis, but they persuaded me to have tablets made with a safe and effective quantity of boron. This I did.

I also retired from teaching and qualified in alternative medicine as I was too old to start a normal medical course. This was fortunate as I studied nutrition, which doctors normally do not study. Nutrition holds the key to nearly all our maladies today. I qualified as a naturopath, osteopath, homoeopath and nutritionist and later gained a Ph.D. in nutrition.

The first 1000 bottles of tablets took two years to sell, but within five years they were selling at 10,000 bottles a month and that was without advertising. Every satisfied user told a few more and so the business grew. It was getting too much for me and I went to a drug company for help in marketing. They made most of their money from aspirin, the main drug used for arthritics. I thought they would be interested in helping arthritic patients. I was wrong and a fool for thinking so.

They said they were not interested, but they were most concerned; not about people with arthritis, but about losing some of their profits. This company had members on at. least two government committes, and these men had boron declared poison in any concentration. Then I was fined nearly $1000 for selling a poison and they successfully put me out of business in Australia. So I moved overseas where boron is not poison by law. Actually there is no such thing as a poisonous substance, there are only poisonous concentrations. We do not call oxygen a poison, but if breathed when pure it will kill fairly quickly.

Since then a double-blind trial has been completed at the Royal Melbourne Hospital and it showed that 70% of those who completed the trial received much help from the boron tablets. Only 12% received help when on placebo. There are little profits to be made by this remedy, but already over 500,000 people world wide have had much help and most have been cured of their arthritis because the essential nutrients were restored to their diet. There have been no real side effects, except that some have reported that their heart ailment has also been helped, better general health and less tiredness.

Following on my early work the U.S. Human Nutrition Research Center in North Dakota' has shown that boron works through the parathyroid, and this is the gland that controls mineralization of bones. Boron also helps to restore the natural hormones to elderly women who were suffering with osteoporosis. This natural hormone is much better than the hormone replacement therapy.[HRT] that is so often recommended by doctors. The HRT too often leads to breast cancer, but not the natural hormone. Patients who have used boron for arthritis just don't seem to develop osteoporosis.

The effect of boron on bone fractures is very interesting, as these fractures just heal in about half the normal time in both man and animal. Horses and dogs with broken leg bones, or even a broken pelvis have recovered fully. Yet it is impossible to get orthopaedic surgeons to give the remedy a proper trial.

I did have patents in six different countries for my formula but these were not worth the paper they are written on. Other people can copy the important aspects of a formula, but vary it a little and they are not infringing the patent. One company even copied my formula exactly and they even used my patients in their advertising and testimonials. So I took them to court and the court made them apologise. This means that no one can gain much money from boron, but there is satisfaction in knowing that people are getting better from one's efforts. I only wish that more knew about it and that they authorities did not try to cover up this work.

During the 1980s I spent much time and effort in travelling around the world nine times, so as to visit places where was more or less arthritis than usual, or where there was more or less soil boron than usual. The result of this to clearly show that there is less arthritis where there is much soil boron and there is much arthritis where soil boron is less. Much use of chemical fertilizers without giving the soil a rest aggravates the boron deficiency, and this is seen in the sugar producing countries of Jamaica, Mauritius and Fiji where there is much arthritis, up to 70%. There are small areas where there is much boron, such as the far north-west of Australia, parts of New Zealand where geo-thermal waters have brought boron to the surface and Israel, where there is less than 1% with arthritis.

It seems as if the "health authorities" just want more and bigger hospitals with more top jobs and expensive drug bills. I would rather see a healthy population who do not need so many hospitals. If only 1% of the national health budget was spent on preventive medicine, and by that I mean proper nutritional advice and teaching the people how to avoid these chronic diseases of old age, there would be fewer sick people and fewer doctors and nurses. Maybe there would even be unemployment in the medical and nursing business. That would indicate that we were really healthier. Hospitals are just a sign of an unhealthy community.

We are what we eat so that much of our lack of good health is due to putting the wrong things into our mouths. It is well known that smoking is deleterious to good health. Sugar is another thing that should be labelled 'poison'. It contains no minerals or vitamins, and when swallowed it requires phosphate which must be taken from the body's store of phosphate, if it was not in the meal. The body's store of phosphate is in the boney skeleton, so when phosphate is removed to help metabolise sugar, then calcium is released to pass out in the urine. We see this effect in the teeth when they become holey, but we don't see that other bones are also affected. This leads later in life to osteoporosis. If sugar were unknown to a modern nation and someone wanted to import it, then it is most likely that sugar would be regarded as a prohibited import or a dangerous drug, because of the many deleterious effects it has on the people who eat it. Most of us have just grown up with sugar and have never heard of its real problems and dangers.

Fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grain breads and fish or meat from grass fed animals will supply natural minerals and vitamins. But when we remove the best parts from these foods in the processing industry we are left with poor deficient part foods. Also when farmers grow for profit so as to get quantity more than quality we suffer with mineral deficient diseases such as arthritis and osteoporosis. I have shown that Africans who eat maize for their entire diet have only 3% arthritis when they eat native maize grown without fertilizer, but the same people soon develop 20% with arthritis when they move to the big cities and eat processed commercially grown maize. A native maize plant will produce about 1 KG of grain, but a good hybrid maize plant will produce up to 10 Kg of grain if well fertilized. But the 1 Kg of native maize had the same amount of trace mineral .[especially boron] as the 10 Kg of hybrid maize. The fertilizer just forced the plant to grow big and lush, but without the life giving trace minerals that we need. In their native state these Africans consume about 2 mg of boron a day but in the cities. they only consume about 0.5 mg boron.

Another example of processed food is seen in commercial ' chicken farming. The young male birds are fed with female hormones to make them grow big and fat, tranquilizers to keep them still and quiet, tenderizers to make the meat immediately tender and antibiotics to keep them alive in poor conditions. I have known young women who had no periods for a year or more because they ate too much chicken. Then it is known that one third of all spent hens have 'broken bones due to osteoporosis, and if they bad been broken for some time the flesh could be bruised. So when they are killed the not so good parts are removed and that is why we can buy so many chicken pieces. Too many elderly people eat this meat because it is cheap, but they are not doing their body any good, so we see more osteoporosis in the elderly.

Racehorses are given the best diet of any animal as their very existence depends on their performance. Quality of diet is of paramount importance. Are we not of more value than the best' racehorse. As a result we should be given the very best quality food in our diet. Instead of this so many of us are content to buy and eat food that has had the best part of it removed so that it will last longer on the shelves: of shops and warehouses. That is why the vitamins and minerals are removed. Packet foods are meant to last a long time on shelves and if we are truly discerning we would never eat it. Pests will not touch much of the processed food as they have instinct, but we lack this instinct and must learn. Sickness is part of this learning process. In years to come people will be able to look back and think what fools we were to even try to survive on some of the deficient foods that so many use today.

We can be particular in buying only fresh and unpolluted food so as to avoid arthritis and similar deficiency diseases. Meanwhile we often have to resort to using supplements that contain the missing minerals and vitamins. I have even digressed into giving some of the advice that "health" authorities should be giving in an effort to prevent diseases such as arthritis. We can prevent all these diseases and no drug or pill can cure any disease, but we can nourish the body so that it will gain strength and overcome the disease.

R.E. Newnham, Cracoe House Cottage, Cracoe, Skipton, North Yorkshire, BD23 6LB. Tel and fax 01756 730 240.
RENewnham@aol.com

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