Question:
RA = Mortality??? What does this mean???
Answer:
I think part of staying healthy is finding a strategy for everything you do.
At the heighth of the AIDS epidemic I worked almost exclusively with HIV?/AIDS
patients.
In the early days of AIDS medicine, AZT was used almost exclusively and it was
frought with side effects. As an acupuncturist, my job was to find strategies
to help mitigate those side effects. Acupuncture was studied at the Quan Yin
center in SF first through an NIH study because we were seeing more than our
share of long term survivors.
I am not suggesting only acupuncture but a process of looking for strategies.
Folic acid and milk thistle are strategies. My personal life is filled with
strategies from thymus to adrenal glandular, from milk thistle to Chinese
herbs. I personally think everyone should have a good home blood pressure
system so that they can monitor the effects of meds before the next three month
visit to the doc.
Stress reduction is a strategy any person with a chronic illness needs to
incorporate into their lifestyle. Empowerment is another process that helps
keep one healthy.
This group and the kind of education people get here is another strategy. I
had a patient the other day who had been taking VIOXX for two months and had
good pain control but her ankles were really swollen and she described "little
heart glitches". Took her blood pressure (which was high) and sent her
immediately to her PCP who took her off VIOXX and put her on a diuretic. If
she had been reading ASA she would have seen her PCP sooner as this condition
had been going on since almost the beginning of vioxx association.
I could write a book about strategies and obviously this is not the time nor
place. The point here is that certainly arthritis drugs create stress for your
body and that there is something you can do about that. I think an anecdotal
informal study of people who do allopathic drug regimines and are long term
survivors would be filled with strategies from exercise and relaxation to
supplements that support the liver, heart and kidneys (and no I'm not
suggesting that anyone self medicate but rather that they investigate).
It means that having inflam.arth. is serious business if a
person wants to continue living their life any where near what their
life was like before it. I first started my battle with RA in my late
30s. Should I already be dead at 62??? I don't think so. IMO its how
well dmards work for a person and how well they eat, exercise, and
handle the stress of everyday life. That is a big combo. Do you think
a person with RA or PA or AS can eat them selves to death? My answer is
yes. Do you think that lack of exercise can weaken a person heart
enough to have a heart attack? My answer is yes. ect, ect.
We have to have studies to let us know what our chances are and the
rest is up to us.
