Podcast: Osteoarthritis, The Great Tradeoff

As the old saying goes, there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. We repeatedly have to choose one opportunity in life over another therefore missing the possibility of the road not taken.

It is stunning how brilliantly created our bodies are to protect us to survive as long as possible in an inhospitable world. This survival depends on ingenious body systems that enable us to make a great trade-off; to continue living in exchange for slow degeneration and pain as we experience that life. In this article, I will examine one of those fantastic mechanisms.

Hip, knee, and shoulder pain leading to joint replacement has become very common in our culture. Osteoarthritis breaks down into osteo, meaning bone, and arthritis, meaning swelling and tenderness, which is inflammation. This is the name given by western medicine to inflammation of joints leading to degeneration of bone and cartilage. It most often affects hips, knees, spine, and hands. Acupuncture is very effective at alleviating the pain of osteoarthritis and can slow down or halt the progression of cartilage and bone deterioration. I have treated patients who have either never gotten to replacement surgery or have delayed it by 5 to 10 years.

To understand how acupuncture helps reduce pain and slow degeneration, let me describe why it happens. As recognized in ancient Chinese medical science, our joints serve a purpose in addition to mobility. One of our mechanisms of survival is to make latent in our body pathogens that we do not successfully defend against at the exterior. Using divergent channels, our immune system transports pathogens to major joints, namely knees, hips, spine, and shoulders. This system creates the great trade-off in life, which is to endure slow, chronic degeneration of joints as we age in exchange for living to a ripe old age. If you like life, this is an excellent but challenging trade-off!

Everyone who has experienced their body working through the illness caused by a flu virus has experienced their divergent channels at work. Flu usually starts out like a common cold with a tight sensation on the back of your neck, a small cough, and a sudden slight fever with light sweating. This is your body’s first attempt to keep the virus, called wind-cold, outside. When it cannot successfully defend, then more coughing, the development of phlegm, a more constant fever, and sweating develop. Body aches are often present at this stage since the virus has moved deeper into the body. When a virus is very strong and/or the person defending is tired and dehydrated, the symptom of joint pain arises. The pathogen has again moved deeper into the body. This is the divergent channels at work, temporarily housing the virus in the joints to give us a chance to regain the resources needed to finally cook it back to the exterior. This is why most people survive a flu attack. The purpose of latency is to keep pathology away from the organs, especially the heart, because progression to them is life threatening. Alas, some people are not strong enough to survive the flu.

Our bodies are often not able to expel all pathology that is held in the joints. This presents a situation where hot wei chi immune energy is present in the joint and slowly cooks the cartilage and bone surface away. This is why osteoarthritis develops. It is the chronic degeneration being traded for survival. As long as our resources are complete and strong, the divergent channels are able to keep us symptom-free. When we become tired and dehydrated or somewhere in our sixth, seventh, or eighth decade when chi and fluids naturally begin to decline, symptoms arise. The pattern of symptoms indicating the divergent channels is that they are chronic, they are one-sided or switch sides, and they come and go intermittently.

When treating osteoarthritis the treatment principle is to shore up the body’s resources needed to maintain symptom-free function of the divergent channels. These resources include chi, thick fluids, thin fluids, and blood. They are all replete when we are in a state of health.

So, what can we do to slow down this creeping process of degeneration and pain? First acupuncture. Regular treatments reinforce your body’s ability to keep the pain and swelling symptoms of osteoarthritis quiet in the divergent channels. If I had osteoarthritis, I would do as I suggested 18 years ago to my now 97-year-old aunt. I would have an acupuncture treatment twice a week for three months, then once a week for the rest of my life. Despite my aunt’s osteoarthritis, she takes no pain medications and only one pharmaceutical, still lives at home by herself, and just stopped driving this year. Acupuncture clearly works according to her!

Second, diet is important. A non-inflammatory diet helps stop triggering the inflammation in your joints. When your gut is inflamed in response to certain foods, a signal is sent to your entire body that there is a threat, create inflammation. Headaches and joint pain are frequent sites of this response. There are two dietary factors that ancient Chinese medical science defines as inflammatory.

First, cold. Ice and refrigerator-temperature drinks and food and raw food are unhealthy. Cold weakens the warm metabolic function called digestive fire so that production of the resources mentioned above is inhibited. In the presence of cold, the immune response called inflammation occurs in order to warm it because it is a threat to life.

Second, on the opposite extreme, are food and drink that are too hot for digestion. These include onions, garlic, hot spices, sugar, chocolate, alcohol, processed substances and GMO’s. Just like cold, these hot foods can damage the sensitive digestive tract so an immune response happens to mitigate the threat. Eating cooked whole food that is neither too cooling nor too heating keeps your digestive fire strong and minimizes gut inflammation that triggers joint and other inflammation.

So you see, there really is no such thing as a free lunch with our health. Threats to our lives like an inflammatory diet, emotional assault and turmoil, and industrial-age trauma like car crashes and high impact sports, have repercussions down the road. We are able to kick that proverbial can down the road over and over in life, but eventually we pay the price with pain and degeneration. Next time you have joint pain, I encourage you to look in the mirror and thank your body for all that it is able to absorb to give you life.