Anyone manage RA without the drugs?
 

I have 2 friends just dx'd in the last year or so, and my neighbor is now trying to manage RA without the drugs...she took some of them for about a year and she's trying to recover from all the side effects.

The other friend is combining both but would LOVE to not take the drugs. Her doc is now testing for Lyme and maybe it's not RA.

I deal with body wide OA for all my life since 18 and I'll be 77....hip replacement in 2010, left me with a big mess of complications. grrrrrr

I just found this group and lots of good information here....thanks

I had a friend at work who eventually had to leave her position because of her RA. She was taking medications for it, but if she was having any side effects she never mentioned anything to me.

I do remember her saying she was also taking turmeric daily, and possibly also fish oil. I don’t know what dosages she may have been taking, nor am I recommending these supplements as I am not really familiar with RA and its treatment.

Right now I'm talking to my neighbor who does not work a lot a all and money is a big issue in her life, lack of it. I don't know how she does it really. Recently, she said she had a flair due to stress of worry about money and pain was out of sight. She ended up taking low dose prednisone and felt better. If I could I'd buy her the supps she takes. She has no one to help her, a niece helps her a bit.

So many of these drugs can make things so much worse.

Curcumin is showing great promise in helping those with inflammation. RA has significant inflammation of the lining (endothelial) of the blood vessels. Curcumin has been found to reduce this inflammation.

Here is a review article from 2011...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3025067/

It mentions the need for better bioavailability which we now have OTC.
LongVida optimized curcumin is now being offered by many quality supplement manufacturers. (NOW brand is called
CurcuBrain).

I'm getting close to ordering her some grape seed ex, she took some yrs back but had to stop due to money. I gave her a bottle of DGL for stomach protection and now thinking of ordering her some curcumin, grape seed ex and DGL from my source where one buys 1 gets 1 or 2 free depending on sales. I'm certainly not loaded but I "feel" for her situation.

Caroline2, the science in the curcumin link that mrsD provided looks good to me.

More pragmatically (you said that your neighbour does not have much money), curcumin is cheap and it could well help with her RA.

Curcumin is not as "cheap" as you would think.

If one chooses turmeric it can be very cheap...but this form is not absorbed well. The studies were done with optimized (solubilized using liposomal technology) curcumin. So the results in those studies are very positive.

LongVida used to be $60+ dollars a month. But now that they have licensed out to other makers, it can be done for about 15 a month. The 400mg Curcubrain is on Amazon for $22.94/50... one needs only one a day of this type.

This is a very nice drop in price for quality. So price is not always a factor for some items. This is also true for the new water soluble CoQ-10's. The Q-gel and Qunol are very good improvements on this item which has terrible solubility in its original free form.

There are thousands of papers now on PubMed concerning curcumin... over 3000, last time I looked.

Re. Tumeric
--I have both OA and RA and have been instructed to use Tumeric. I have been using an organic powder/spice form that I just sprinkle on my hard boiled eggs, avocado and tomato in the morning. Would this form be comparable to a tablet form?

The fat in the avocado may help absorption some....but tumeric that is "raw" and not solubilized somehow, is just not absorbed much. It will remain mostly in the GI tract and may provide some local anti-inflammatory actions there.

The studies that were done showing promise for body inflammation used specially optimized curcumin to enhance absorption thru the GI tract and into the blood stream.

My thinking is sprinkles are not much in dose I have a swansons turmeric phytosome with meriva and each cap is 500mg, I take one per day for sure. Also have a weaker turmeric that is 720mg per cap and says 2 per day. both from swansons. I make soups at least once a week, and pour 2 caps of turmeric in my soup.