Cashews made my arthritis worse

About 6 weeks ago, I stopped eating cashews because I thought they might be contributing to inflammation and thus causing the arthritis that was making me think I had to give up gardening professionally.  My symptoms immediately began to ease, and I was able to stop taking cayenne to control them.  I still have sore muscles from overuse at times, but not the pain that caused me to eventually use a full teaspoon of cayenne every day, which caused other painful symptoms as it came out.
I had been eating about a half-cup of cashews nearly every day with my lunch for the last 10 years for their vitaminB17, AKA Laetrile, which supposedly wards off cancer.  It was a good excuse to eat an expensive but favorite nut that I saw listed in the sources of this vitamin.
I had occasionally been having arthritis symptoms in my hip before I changed my lunch from tomato juice with a half-teaspoon of cayenne and a yogurt, to sesame-chocolate chip oatmeal cookies and cashews, and taking orange juice, cranberry juice and cayenne (Crazy juice) first thing in the morning to ward off the arthritis with cayenne and keep bladder infections at bay with cranberry juice.  The combination of cayenne, tomato juice and yogurt was causing heartburn as I bent to my work.  Cookies and cashews worked better for my stomach, but I eventually had to give up cookies to preserve my teeth.  I started making sesame crackers instead, eventually figuring out that sesame had clearedup my sun spots.
A few years ago, I had a bout of Lyme disease from a tick bite and ended up with swollen, arthritic joints in my hands.  I cured that with oregano oil, but the arthritis remained and got worse from working with scissors and litter grabber.  I had to increase my cayenne intake to a teaspoon a day, causing its own distressing symptoms. 
After a bit of heart pain, for which I now carry nitro pills to take if necessary, I started thinking hard about what might be causing all of this inflammation.  I remembered what I’d long known, that cashews have urushiol, the irritant in poison oak and poison sumac, and that their nuts have to be roasted to be edible.  I am allergic to poison oak; perhaps some urushiol lingered in the lightly roasted nuts I was eating.  So I stopped eating them and my arthritis soon cleared up to the point that I could discontinue the cayenne, though I still need cranberry juice for my bladder.
I then searched “cashews, inflammation” and found a lot of articles saying that cashews don’t cause inflammation.  No smoke without fire; they would not need to deny it if there was not a problem with cashews and inflammation in some people.

Special October supplement
Gardening is easy if you do it naturally.  Litter is tagging, marking the territory of the disorderly.


Rycke Brown, Natural Gardener              541-955-9040              rycke@gardener.com

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I've stopped being a Twitter pig

I've been tweeting for a couple of months now, and I've figured out a few things.  I've stopped being a Twitter pig. A pig eats nearly anything, and that is what I was doing.  I was following anybody who followed me, and anybody who was suggested to me by Twitter, with very few exceptions.  My Twitter notifications become too many, and my Twitter feed was filling up with some really nasty junk.  I was also getting too many Direct Messages wasting my time with spam, mostly selling Twitter followers or music. I now don't automatically follow anybody who follows me.  I don't even necessarily respond.  I go to the site first and decide if I can stand what they are tweeting.  Really bad English and cussing turns me off.  So does sex and nudity.  So does selling Twitter followers.  Hip Hop musicians were a major source of bad English, cussing, sex and nudity.  Sellers of followers are everywhere. If I decide that a new follower qual...
Read more

Open Letter to petitioners re #Measure48 Mississippi

Mississippi Measure 48 is a proposed constitutional amendment, posted at http://www.mississippiforcannabis.org/  .  I have a question about its "locality tax," licenses, and fees.   Answers and further discussion will be edited into this post. " ...Regulations will require an annual Mississippi Cannabis Sales license issued by any Mississippi County Circuit Clerk for a fee of no more than $1000.00 to all adult residents who apply, and a $25.00 annual city or county governing locality fee to farm 10 - 500 plants. Locality fees for cannabis farms with more than 500 plants will not exceed $1000.00...." At first this "locality fee" sounded like a flat yearly fee, but the last sentence above makes it clear that is wrong.  Is it $25 per plant?  If so, it should say "per plant" after "$25." But it couldn't be $25 per plant, because 500 plants times $25 is $12,500.  501 plants, however, would only be $1000.  A fee of $25 plus $5 per p...
Read more

Open letter to honey processors: Change your caps

Image
A flat-topped 5-pound honey bottle; the fat one mentioned was thrown away.  The other day, I went looking for a honey dispenser with a pointy cap, because the 1 lb flat-topped squirt bottle I had been using was always sticky.  Honey would collect on the flat top and drip down the side when it was used.  It was a fat-top bottle, made to be able to set it upside down for easy dispensing, but that only made it easy for the honey to leak out and make a pool in the cabinet. I was looking through the honey selection at Fred Meyer and all the containers had the same type of flat top, some with a fatter top for setting the bottle upside down, others with a smaller top of the same design.  I noticed that the Agave Nectar bottles used by Madhava (Madhavasweeteners.com) had a pointed cap that opened to a short cone-shaped dispenser with a sloping cap that looked unlikely for honey to pool on.  I bought it, used it up, and now it is my honey dispenser. I call on ...
Read more