In the United States alone, more than  forty million people suffer from arthritis. Some put the figure as high as seventy million, ranging in age from six years old to one hundred. And no cure. What sort of nonsense is this? We have become a drug reliant populace. We’ll take anything that promises relief from pain, however fleeting. The time to get real relief from arthritis pain is before the pain starts. And I’m going to tell you how to do it.

I need to say that I’m a lawyer, not a doctor, and all the information I’m lucky enough to pass on comes from 35 years of interacting with sufferers who want to cure arthritis naturally but are consistently prescribed high risk drugs .

Arthritis starts either suddenly with immediate swelling of the extremities or gradually, creeping up like a thief in the night.

Sudden onset has you rushing to your physician because you can’t use your keys or carry a plate. Physician looks at your poor swollen hands and puffy joints and pronounces RA, and starts you on RA drugs which, initially, reduce both swelling and pain.  And that can be a long horrible road filled with DMARDS and NSAIDS, which cause high blood pressure, insomnia,  cataracts, thin skin and bruising, if you’re lucky. If you’re not lucky, they kill you. And I won’t even touch on the much touted biologics. You’re so horrified that you accept the diagnosis and take the drugs ad infinitum. Naturally, your arthritis is not cured but the pain and swelling is managed so that you can function, sort of.

There is another way. At the sudden onset of this pain and swelling in your hands (RA usually starts in the hands), don’t assume that this is a life sentence. Assume that it is an infection. Have your physician prescribe an antibiotic first. See if it clears the pain and swelling. If it does, you are not sentenced to a life of misery. This approach is not automatically adopted by any physician but it’s something which should be tried in the first instance.

Gradual onset is a horse of a different color altogether. You have to prepare for gradual onset. If up to 70 million people succumb to the many forms of arthritis assume that, as you mature, you’re going to have stiffness and, perhaps, pain. So avoid it. Starting as young as 25 get into the avoidance habit. Immediately you get up in the morning, before you even get to the bathroom, stretch. Touch the ceiling. Bend to each side. Touch your toes. Twist from side to side.  Five repetitions please. You may not be able to touch the ceiling, of course, but act as if! Nowadays most younger people take some sort of exercise but the wrinklies or near wrinklies are still in the bed-to shower-to-car-to-desk mode. They’re really the ones who need to start a mild exercise regime. You don’t need to climb Mount Everest. You do need to move your muscles and joints. The other little problem is weight. Lose it. The more weight you carry, the more stress on your joints, the more likely there is arthritis in your future. Again, slowly, slowly works the best. Change your desert from cheese cake to a piece of fruit. Every second day. If you work at a desk, take a ten minute walk at lunch time. These simple precautions strengthen your joints and by making a habit of a little exercise and a little weight loss, you can cure arthritis naturally, before it starts.

But does copper work? Yes, we believe it does. Copper, as a trace element, is absolutely essential to human health and well being. As far back as 2400BC, copper was used to sterilize water and to cure a variety of ailments in humans and domestic animals. Around 400BC, Hippocrates, the father of modern medicine, prescribed copper, not just for joint disease, but to cure varicose veins and to heal open wounds. Researchers for modern day big drug companies have discovered that copper seems to be part of the fountain of youth. They are adding copper to their body lotions and face creams and telling us that copper deficiency leads to wrinkles and sagging skin.

The average adult body should have a copper reserve of approximately 100 milligrams. We need to replenish this reserve by adding about 3 mg per day. In fact, most of us don’t have 100 milligrams of copper in our bodies and we don’t add 3 mg per day through our diet or otherwise. Copper deficiency leads to a plethora of malfunctions in the body. An essential role of copper is to activate the enzymes essential to health. Another is to assist in the synthesis and maintenance of bone and connective tissue. Since arthritis is a disease of joint and bone, you can see how supplementing our copper reserve should help to ease the pain of this crippling disease.

So, how to we get the copper into our system? Well, we can take zinc and copper supplements (they‘re usually bracketed together). That will give us an arbitrary amount, maybe too little or too much. Wouldn’t it perhaps be better to devise a system in which the body draws the copper it needs from a readily available source? That sounds like a good idea! And that’s what our ancestors thought too when they fashioned copper wrist bands. They believed that the copper in the wrist band was absorbed into the blood stream in miniscule amounts, as needed.

We see, every day, that the traditional cures for many diseases work better than lethal drugs. Copper is just one of those traditional cures. It worked in 2400BC and it works today. It’s a gentle, non-invasive, non-chemical way of giving the body an adequate amount of an absolutely essential trace element. And the most efficient way of absorbing the copper you need could very well be in a copper bracelet!