But what about pain?

If you are in pain, you don't want to wait to roll back the clock - you want relief now.

Some pain is useful, such as when a sudden pain in the finger signals that it is too close to a hot burner on the stove.

But most pain is not useful at all. It is caused by inflammation, which in turn might be caused by inflammation at a different site, or by an injury from the distant past, or by infection or irritation....

So what do you do?

Getting to the root of the pain is always a good idea. So getting rid of the underlying inflammation makes sense. What makes even more sense is rubbing on something that will give instant relief.

But drugs create their own problems. It's not unusual to have corticosteroids prescribed for inflammation, but they can't use for long without creating new problems. Other drugs have side-effects, too. These manufactured substances

But there are non-manufactured, naturally occurring formulations that can address both the cause of pain and the need for immediate relief.

Click here for one natural formulation (a combination of various vegetable materials) that over a week or two allows the body to reduce its inflammatory response, and hence pain.

And click here for a cream that works very quickly to give deep pain relief.

I had a good experience with the cream just the other day. I am undergoing occupational therapy for a damaged hand (broken in a fall in China last February). After each session, I come home with a very sore hand and wrist, and last Thursday it was almost unbearable. Someone reminded me I had some of that cream, which I then rubbed into the sore places. I'd say about 3/4 of the pain disappeared in about 2 minutes.

It lasted too. I didn't need to put any more on - not till today when I had more OT! Now it's sore again, and as I write this, I realize I'd be a lot happier if I got up from the keyboard and found my tube of cream.

I know several people who are using these two formulations, and I'll include more stories as I have time.

Rolling back the clock is a good plan, but if pain is so bad that it gets in the way of normal activities and clear thinking and nice conversation with people who are in range, then you'll want to deal with the pain now, before rolling back the clock. Maybe try these formulations.

The man who walked back through time

This story is true, though I didn't hear it first-hand. I don't know his name, but I'm going to call him Jack. I hope you find it as inspiring as I did.

Jack was 68 years old and a real couch potato. One day he was expecting something in the mail and his wife wasn't home to go out to the mailbox at the street, so he decided to do it himself.

He could barely make it to the end of the driveway, which was only 30 or so feet long - let alone make it back.

As he plopped back down onto the couch, he was shaken by how short a distance he could walk. What had happened? Where had his mobility gone?

He decided to do something about it.

Today he had walked to the mailbox and back. So tomorrow he would walk to the next mailbox and back. Just there and back. And the next day he would add another mailbox. And so on.

And he did it.

I have no idea how much of a challenge following this plan meant to him in the beginning. But later on - great things happened. He continued to add mailboxes, week after week after week.

He started feeling better, and he started moving better. so well that at the end of a year, he ran a marathon, all 26 miles of it.

What Jack did was to roll back the clock, to walk back through time to a point where he was younger biologically.

Rolling back the clock is possible! That's what this blog is about.

Now for the rest of the story: I was so inspired that I decided to do it too. I added one driveway a day (even if I felt like going farther, and even if I felt like not going that far). I took Gimli, our dog, with me, and we walked and walked. In no time we were going good distances, miles and miles, and it was fun because I knew each day represented progress, and because I felt great.

Gimli and I did this until we moved away from the area. It was fun, healthy fun.

I don't know what became of Jack, but I wish I did. He was a real inspiration to me. Come to think of it, I think I'll start again! Peg

PS Let me know if you decide to do this. I think it would be great to compare notes.

You're young, you're well, but...

Even though you are in the prime of life - the age of most bloggers, I think - you must know someone who is not.

Who do you know who is sick and condemned to eating fistfuls of drugs every day? Or who is depressed by a dire diagnosis? Or who is feeling 'old'?

Send them a link to this blog, if you would be so kind. They may get hope.

It's not over till it's over, you know? Where there's life there's hope - a great adage.

This blog is to help people get back on the track to health, to help them remember that the body has a great ability to heal itself, that treatments often don't support increased health, that there are choices to be made that can turn things around again.

Mostly they'll see stories here where that has happened for someone else.

If you care for someone who is not well, let them know we're here - on our own journey and willing to share what has helped.

Doctors are better at diagnosis than they are at fixing

What if you've been diagnosed with Type II diabetes? You have all the symptoms, and there's no denying it: your sugar is high unless you take steps to lower it. Usually those steps include a drug like Glyburide or any number of others.

Then you take it for the rest of your life.

Part of your routine might also be finger sticks and testing.

All of this is a life sentence - you have to do it faithfully or things can go bad very fast.

So you have a diagnosis, and a treatment that works - for now anyway.

But you are not cured!

If you stop your prescription, you find your blood sugar climbing. If your diabetes is bad enough, disaster soon follows.

Maybe you have accepted the life sentence of drugs and finger pricks and worrying about your sugar, testing and monitoring and changing your diet and habits. But remember - these things are not curing you!

Doctors are better at diagnosis than they are at fixing. Nothing the doctor tells you to do will make you permanently better.

Oh, yes. He may tell you to lose weight, and exercise. Good! These things actually build health. (The whole issue of weight loss is worthy of several more postings, which I'll put off to another day.) But they are almost always peripheral to taking a drug, testing, etc.

This post is not about diabetes, it's about diagnosis and prescription that don't result in a cure.

Mostly we accept that diagnosis, with resignation and regret to be sure. We have every reason to believe the diagnosis. But maybe we don't have to.

Are there options? Almost always. The medical model is not the only true model of health. In fact, it is not a model of health at all, but one of sickness and treatment. This medical model (diagnose, prescribe) is new, and it almost always means a life sentence of drugs and more drugs, apparatus and restrictions and no fun.

And the worst part of all is that it creates and maintains the image, in front of us at all times, that our body functions poorly.

Don't believe it! Don't believe the diagnosis more than you believe in your ability to be well!

The model of health - the belief that you are inherently healthy and your body can repair itself and become whole again - is different from that model of sickness and treatment, which basically says that without drugs the body would cease to function. See how different they are?

Which model have you adopted? This blog is devoted to the model of health. More to come.

Roll back #2: 36 years of freedom from arthritis

Kay's story is still remarkable, 36 years after it began.

In 1970, Kay Ferguson from Wellesley MA had such bad arthritis in her hips that she couldn't get in and out of the car - and she still had kids at home.

Her doctor put her on Darvon, and gave her a cortisone shot when it got so bad that she couldn't sleep several nights in row - and of course they both realized there would be bad side effects. It wasn't a good long term program, but nothing else was working.

Through a long series of events, she came across a substance* (not a drug) that resulted in no more pain, and a lot more flexibility. She and her family even drove cross-country to Arizona that summer.

She was cured!

Only she wasn't. She ran out of what she was taking, and within a week the pain and stiffness came back. It took her a while to track down some more, and once she got going again the pains went away. Kay hadn't felt that limber and painfree and able to sleep and do the errands for a long time.

She had rolled back the clock.

And now for the rest of the story: the clock is still rolled back. At 86, she is still free from arthritis - except for a troublesome spot at the base of one thumb. Sometimes that acts up and she takes a little more of the formulation. She knows she's not 'cured'. But it hardly matters: she hardly knows she's 'got' arthritis.

*I would be happy to name the products mentioned in these postings but it is against the the rules of the company they come from. Email me or click on the links for details.

An example of rolling back the clock

This is Jimmy's story.

At that time he was turning 60 and had a check up scheduled. He was appalled to learn that he had several signs of heart disease, and diabetes. He hadn't a clue! His blood sugar was just one side or the other of 300.

Not knowing you have it is pretty typical with diabetes in the beginning, I hear.

He was put on oral diabetes meds right away, and given a list of forbidden foods - and it all left him depressed and miserable and feeling deprived.

His wife had been coming to little health meetings we were holding and he was upset enough to allow himself to be dragged along. After listening to everyone's stories, he decided he had nothing to lose to try what they were doing.*

The following month his blood sugar was 97, and the doctor, under pressure from Jimmy, took him back off the meds to see if his sugar would stabilize. It did, and stayed that way at least as long as the time we were still in touch, about a year more.

This is rolling back the clock. This is going back to the decision point, and even before that, to the point where health is still an option, where a life sentence of a medication can still be avoided.

*Here's what Jimmy did. He went on a basic nutrition program. Just that: a good brand of vitamins and a good source of protein.

These days Jimmy has a few other choices such as a natural glucose regulation product that's not a drug.

Pharmaceuticals are not the only way to roll back the clock. Other stories to come....