Chapter 2 – Questions and answers about arthritis
Marguerite Patten, O.B.E., a well-known and highly respected food writer, and Jeannette Ewin, Ph.D., a health journalist with an international following, have joined forces to create an eating plan that can help you beat the pain and distress of arthritis. The Eat to Beat Arthritis Diet, and everything you need to know about how it can change your life, is contained in this book.
Arthritis has been compared to being locked in a prison: its symptoms bar you from living the way you wish. In this book you will learn how to break lifestyle habits that have shackled you to pain. The pages that follow contain the latest information about food supplements that fight the causes and symptoms of arthritis. You will also learn how to listen to your own body, and understand what it is telling you about the food you eat.
The Eat to Beat Arthritis Diet is based on a selection of foods and supplements that help your body fight the pain of crippling disease. Unlike other diets you may have tried in the past, it allows you to enjoy appetizing and satisfying meals while you chart the dietary course towards wellbeing. Using foods recommended in the Eat to Beat Arthritis Diet, Marguerite Patten has developed over 60 delicious recipes that can be enjoyed by everyone – not just those suffering from arthritis. Unlike the recipes you may have tried in some healthrelated cookery books, the dishes described here are full of appealing flavour and texture.
Working on this book was a labour of love for Marguerite, as she personally knows how arthritis can affect one’s life. Her search for a means of controlling this painful illness had been long and hard, and included both acupuncture and chiropractic treatments. When these failed, her doctor said surgery on a severely arthritic hip was the only answer. Faced with family and professional responsibilities, Marguerite’s response was, ‘Sorry. I haven’t the time right now.’ With hope of finding an answer to her advancing illness in some other form of therapy, she turned for help to the subject she knows best: food. By changing her diet she changed her life, and in this book she not only provides clear instructions about how to cook the appropriate foods, but also shares the secrets of her own story.
Reading every health and diet book she could find that focused on the perplexing problem of arthritis, Marguerite came across an international bestseller: A Doctor’s Proven New Home Cure for Arthritis, by Dr Giraud W. Campbell. Here was a healing diet that incorporated foods she enjoyed eating. The prescribed therapy was strict, but manageable. She gave it a try and within weeks experienced a dramatic and clinically recognizable improvement in her condition.
Over the years since her introduction to Dr Campbell’s book, much has been learned about how diets work and why certain nutrient supplements help control this debilitating illness. To share her personal experience, and to expand what she had learned about diet and arthritis, Marguerite Patten teamed up with a friend and nutritionist, Dr Jeannette Ewin. Taking their lead from Dr Campbell’s book, they developed the Eat to Beat Arthritis Diet. This sensible and healthy way to enjoy good food combines Marguerite’s decades of experience developing tasty and sure-fire recipes, with Jeannette’s insight into the interactions between food, nutrition and health. As a side benefit, those who follow their advice will soon find they not only gain control over pain, but also enjoy a greater feeling of wellbeing.
Chapter 1 You can beat arthritis!
During an awards ceremony, American comedian Jack Benny reportedly said: Thank you for this honour, but I don’t know what I did to deserve it. Then again, I have arthritis, and I don’t know what I did to deserve that either.’
If – like Jack Benny – you suffer from arthritis, you know it is no laughing matter. Pain can dominate your life, and its effects are insidious. You don’t sleep well at night because your joints hurt. Backache plagues you while you are in bed. Knees and hips ache when you get out of bed. Slowly, you begin to feel depressed by the lack of sleep. During the day you begin avoiding exercise. Taking a walk, swinging a golf club,