as a physician I've used many therapies
for arthritis in the past without much
benefit or with temporary benefit. I've
used steroid injections, I've use
lidocaine injections, I've used mobic,
I've used celebrex, I've used naproxen
and tylenol, all kinds of things. all
these therapies basically just put a
temporary band-aid, a temporary relief
from the pain
moreover we don't talk about a lot is
all the dangers that come from taking
these medications chronically because
typically when you've got arthritis it's
not just that you have arthritis for one
day or one month you've got arthritis
for life and the arthritis just keeps
getting worse and worse so as you take
these medications you might need to take
more or you take them for so long that
your body begins to deplete of vital
nutrients. Take tylenol for example it's
been toted as one of the safest
medications on the planet and that's why
it's over the counter people take it
all the time and tylenol has been safe
safe safe but what you don't know is
that tylenol depletes your glutathione
levels and if you've been watching any
of my other blogs or read on my website
glutathione is one of the most precious
antioxidants that you make every day
glutathione helps you anti-inflame the
system, it's a detoxifier, it helps get
rid of toxins, it helps you lose weight,
it it helps you improve your brain
function
glutathione is needed to keep your body
healthy so if you're taking tylenol to
eliminate the pain of the knees yet also
creating an environment of inflammation
then your knee pain is going to get
worse over time then you're going to
require more Tylenol, your glutathione is
going to deplete further. Naproxen, it
raises your risk for stomach ulcers and
gastritis and reflux and heartburn
amongst the other dysbiosis and small
intestinal bacterial overgrowth and
inflammatory bowels that come with
chronic non-steroidal anti-inflammatory
drug use like naproxen and
advil and motrin and aleve and all
those. I'm not saying those are terrible
drugs, or toxic drugs because i recommend
them frequently but I don't want you
have to take them for a long time. I'd rather
see you get off these drugs.  i've seen
people take steroids by mouth to help
their arthritis and while this does work
steroids increase your risk for a myriad
of things. it raises your blood sugar and
we now know that any level that your
blood sugar raises damages proteins in
your bloodstream and bowels and in your
brain and these can lead to early signs
of alzheimer's and dementia and heart attacks
and strokes sugar damages proteins. the
higher the sugar the more damaging the
proteins so if you're taking these
steroids it's raising the blood sugar
and that's creating damage to these
proteins the other thing is it raises
your risk for infection if you have
arthritis chances are you're a little
bit older and if you're older you're
already at higher risk of pneumonia and
ear infections and sinus infections
and things that can turn deadly
unfortunately so why would you take
steroids and increase your risk of those
infections and increase the potential
for those to become deadly infections
the other issue with steroids is it
actually finger muscles that makes you
gain fat. steroids in high doses makes
you put on weight in your cheeks and in
the back of your neck and under your
throat and in your belly and it forces
muscle tissue to donate their protein to
the body. high-dose steroids tell the
body that it's in a stressful situation
and it thinks it's running from a tiger
so it's going to burn all the fuel that
it can. the odd part is that it actually
puts fat on it so why would you want to
expose yourself to more and more
steroids in order to try to limit your
knee pain when you've got this
alternative option that can regenerate
and heal the knee or hip
or shoulder or whatever joint is
arthritic to begin with.  steroids
overtime thin your bones. so oral steroids
or injected steroids into muscle tissue
are certainly the highest dose and worst
side effect steroids but steroids
injected into the joint also affect the
system they also increase the blood
sugar they also thin the bones and we've
shown time and time again that if you
continuously inject steroids into a
joint you actually extend the the speed
of the the damage in the joint and the
joint gets worse over time the joint is
more damaged and the cartilage ....
or the cartilage gets damaged quicker so
it speeds up the arthritis and that's
the last thing you want. a lot of people
are using steroid injections for their
joints and so I want to talk a little
bit about those because I've done many
steroid injections over my career as a
physician and i want to say that they
definitely help. if you're suffering
from joint pain a steroid injection can
definitely help the pain
the problem is they've done studies to
show that if you recurrently get joint
injections and the most you can do is
one every three or four months but if
you continue to get joint injections
every three or four months it actually
shows that it increases the damage in
your joint it speeds up the damage in
the joint and this just makes sense
your body's inflaming the joint it's
calling for help it's telling you to stop
stepping on me. It hurts, stop doing this
It is calling for help. Inflammation is
your body calling for help saying come
heal me and so instead of saying come
heal me now you're sticking a steroid in
there and you're telling the body
stop.. stop healing itself... stop inflaming
just stop doing everything and so what
happens of course the damage just keeps
going and going
now there's a difference between chronic
inflammation
and acute inflammation so chronic
inflammation is damaging to the joint
and so if you get into a chronic
situation where it's just chronically inflamed then
it does hurt and it will damage it
that's still not to say that a steroid
injection is going to benefit you. A steroid
injection will deteriorate the cartilage,
the ligaments, the soft tissue even
faster
that's why we don't use cortisol or
steroids in scar tissue because if
you inject cortisol or steroids into a
scar tissue it delays the healing it
prevents it from healing very well and
then you can't fight infection very well
and so you're more likely to get an
infection in the area so steroids in
general offer a temporary band-aid to a
problem but they're not a solution
they're one of the only solutions people
have until they get a joint replacement
but that's because so many people don't
even know about stem cell therapy so PRP,
stem cell therapy is definitely the way
to go for arthritis for most people that
get treatment
it's usually just a one-time treatment
and then they're great for years
everyone's a little different so you're
not sure if you're going to need a
repeat injection and also depends on how
bad the damage was
