A small study involving twins suggests that a person's genes play only a minor role in whether or not they will develop rheumatoid arthritis -- an autoimmune disease in which the body's tissues are mistakenly attacked by its own immune system.
The potentially disabling disease, which affects 2.1 million Americans, causes chronic inflammation and pain of the joints.
Many scientists believe that there exists an appreciable genetic component in the causation of the disease, but no single genetic factor has been proven as the cause of the disease.
To investigate researchers studied 13 identical and 36 fraternal (non-identical) twin pairs in which at least one twin had rheumatoid arthritis. In two of the fraternal twin pairs both siblings were affected, but in none of the identical twin pairs were both siblings affected.
So even though identical twins have exactly the same genes, only one of the twins developed the disease.
Thus, the study shows that environmental effects seem to be of pivotal significance in the causation of rheumatoid arthritis, and contrasts the results from previous twin studies on rheumatoid arthritis which have pointed toward a role for the genes.
British Medical Journal February 2, 2002;234:264-267
This is a very important study that clearly demonstrates that rheumatoid arthritis, like most all other diseases, are a result of things that happen, or more frequently, things we allow to let happen to us, then due to who our parents were.
This is particularly encouraging because if it was due to genetics, there would be little one could do to modify the disease.
I have successfully treated many thousands of patients with rheumatoid arthritis with the antibiotic protocol that I refined from Dr. Brown.
His belief was that mycoplasmas significantly contributed to the illness and was helped with antibiotics.
Many tens of thousands of patients have been improved with this therapy and I have observed that it works far better when one is following the eating plan.
I was always disappointed though that I had to resort to antibiotics to treat the problem.
Two years ago I learned NST that is a profoundly effective gentle structural rebalancing technique. It improved our rates but we still had something missing.
Late last year I finally had a new option and that was EFT. With EFT most of the milder cases of RA are now resolve without the need for antibiotics.
It appears that emotional stresses impair the immune system which allow the underlying infection to cause its damage.
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