Arthritis is taking a large emotional, physical and financial toll on Americans. If you read the above article you will see that at least 25 percent of Americans have arthritis or a related disease and another 20 percent are suffering from chronic pain and stiffness that could be caused by arthritis.

If you or someone you know has arthritis or a related disease, it's important that you know there are relatively simple approaches that have worked for thousands of patients I have treated with this problem. The basis for these approaches stems from Dr. Thomas Brown, who passed away 14 years ago. He developed an innovative alternative to the traditional approach to the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) more than 50 years ago.

He believed that RA was due to an infection with an organism called mycoplasma and used antibiotics as an alternative to treatment with the miracle drug of his time, prednisone.

He was able to help more than 10,000 patients recover from RA during his career. I have revised his protocol with diet, Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) and NST strategies and have helped nearly 3,000 patients recover from RA. However, I have always been seeking to avoid using the antibiotics to treat this problem.

Although the antibiotics frequently worked and the six-month period of worsening that was part of Dr. Brown's protocol was virtually eliminated, I always felt like I had failed because I had to resort to the use of antibiotics.

Well, last year marked a transition in my version of the antibiotic protocol. The major change has to do with the use of nutritional typing. Since we have integrated nutritional typing with full use of EFT to address the stressors that seem to be universally present in RA, we have been able to cause RA to routinely go into remission without the use of antibiotics.

To say I am excited is a serious understatement.

If you are skeptical I encourage you to read this patient's story, as she was able to achieve great success in overcoming dermatomyositis, a disease with many similarities to RA, by following the program.

If you would like to find out your own nutritional type, I have included a basic test that allows you to do so in my new book. Alternatively, you could come to my clinic located outside of Chicago if you are looking for a drug-free, effective and rapid solution to most cases of RA. At the very least, I highly encourage you to carefully read through the Physicians' Protocol for Using Antibiotics in Rheumatic Disease.

There are some general principles that seem to hold true for all people, regardless of nutritional type, and these include:

• Eliminating sugar and grains
• Having unprocessed, high-quality foods, organic if possible
• Eating your food as close to raw as possible
• Having omega-3 fish oil

Also, most people with RA seem to have some sort of precipitating emotional trauma. The emotional trauma weakens the immune system, which is what allows the infection to get in. As I mentioned above, EFT is a useful technique has resulted in profound improvements in patients with RA.

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