Knee replacement puts the cart before the horse

Alert for arthritis sufferers: Avoid this knee replacement scam

Mainstream surgeons must be spending a lot of time hanging around used car lots these days.

Because the minute that balky knee starts to give out… or those painful hips start to stiffen… every surgeon seems to ask the same question.

“What’s it going to take to put you into a new set of joints today?”

The joint replacement market is exploding. There are more than 700,000 knee replacements done every year in America alone — and that number is going to be over a million very soon.

But if you have rheumatoid arthritis and some surgeon is trying to talk you into a knee replacement, you need to know that he’s not selling you a new lease on life.

There’s a good chance you’re being sold a pig in a poke.

A new study out of the University of Nebraska Medical Center is the latest trying to convince rheumatoid arthritis patients to get their knees replaced, even calling the surgery a “time machine” for your joints.

Well, I don’t know about a time machine. You’ll probably come to think of it more like a giant vacuum that sucks cash out of your wallet and leaves you in terrible pain.

If you ask me, all this latest study proved is that rheumatoid arthritis patients who rush to get their knees replaced are practically guaranteed to be disappointed. Their recovery is slower and more difficult, and even the researchers who are promoting the surgery admit the disease will continue to attack your joints — including your new knees.

And of course that’s true. Because while that surgeon was busily sawing into your bones and joints, he didn’t do a darned thing to actually treat or cure your rheumatoid arthritis!

And until you get to the bottom of what’s really causing your condition, you’re just going to keep ruining joints.

The fact is, rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease — which means that your body is being attacked by its own immune system. Antibodies that are supposed to destroy foreign invaders — like bacteria and viruses — end up targeting and damaging healthy tissue instead.

The trick to beating rheumatoid arthritis is to find out which environmental toxins or allergens are triggering the attack. In my own practice, I’ve found that rheumatoid arthritis flare-ups can be caused by something as simple as a milk allergy.

And once we eliminate the allergens, my patients dramatically improve.

Never agree to a joint surgery — and the months of rehab that come with it — without first addressing the actual cause of your joint damage.

If you’re suffering from rheumatoid arthritis, tell your doctor you want comprehensive allergy testing. That may be the first step toward curing your disease — instead of just treating the symptoms.

Sources:

Knee replacement may ease pain for rheumatoid arthritis patients

(nlm.nih.gov)