When Lee Spievack sliced off the tip of his finger, his brother Alan, a medical research scientist, sent him a special powder and told him to sprinkle it on the wound. In four weeks, his fingertip grew back completely.

That powder was a substance called extracellular matrix, a mix of protein and connective tissue surgeons use to repair tendons. It signals your body to start the process of tissue regrowth, and holds some of the secrets behind the emerging new science of regenerative medicine.

In one lab at Wake Forest University, researchers are already growing body parts, including muscle tissue and whole organs. And using this technology, a patients own cells have been used to grow a bladder that was then transplanted into the patient.

Many scientists believe that every tissue in your body has cells that are capable of regeneration, and the key is to find enough of those cells and direct them to grow. At least in theory, this process could be used to regrow limbs, organs, and other body parts.
Sources:

* CBS News March 22, 2008

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Regrowing organs is just a part of what the relatively new field of regenerative medicine is trying to accomplish. In short, some of those in this field are working with cells at the base level, and trying to figure out how to organize them into different structures of tissues and organs.

As one of the researchers in the article above said, all cells are programmed to make new tissue, so directing them to grow a certain organ or limb is not that far of a stretch.

I actually served as the kidney transplant coordinator for the University of Illinois prior to starting medical school in 1978. It was my first experience with the Internet. Even back then it was clear that the ability to produce organs without having to put people on waiting lists would certainly be one of the positive accomplishments of modern medicine.

But there is something even more astounding than using science to regrow tissues. According to the field of epigenetics, it is actually possible for your mind to do this type of regeneration.

Your Body Has the Ability to Regenerate

This is true on many levels, such as healing a skin wound or broken bone. Its also true for organs, such as your liver. And, it turns out it may also be true for your limbs.

I recently spoke with Bruce Lipton, PhD., who is a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, and according to him, you could actually regenerate a lost limb — if you had the right belief system.

Weve already shown abilities of regeneration that go far beyond anything that weve given credit to, Dr. Lipton said, But then we also have to recognize that, up to now, we have total beliefs against such a regeneration. I mean, its like people [say], ‘It just cant happen!’

Well, if thats the belief — its unfortunate because many patients in the medical system are actually prevented from really doing great healings on themselves because they buy the belief of the conventional system that this cannot happen, and it totally limits their ability.

In other words, the only thing keeping you from the ability to regenerate any limb, organ or tissue in your body is the belief that it cant be done. This is engrained in you from the time youre a child, and youre told that you must go to the doctor when youre sick. Well, if you grew up believing that YOU could heal your body, without medicine, without doctors, and without surgeries, it would be another story.

Further proof that you have the ability to regenerate lies in stem cells, which are already in your body right now.

I work on stem cells, Dr. Lipton says. Stem cells are embryonic cells. They can replace any tissue or organ in your body right now. Youre filled with stem cells.

And yet, heres the interesting cultural belief: Well, God mustve given me these stem cells but apparently they dont work, and so were going to give them to pharmaceutical companies and were going to give them billions of dollars and theyre going to find the key to how to make the stem cells works. And its like, come on, give me a break. Do you think you got these stem cells with no way to use them?

And the answer, of course, is no.

But harnessing your bodys ability to heal itself involves major shifts in your thought processes. You must believe your body can heal for it to work.

Your beliefs are energy fields, and they are working to promote either health or disease in your body right now. Which one is up to you.

If youd like to experiment with this concept in your own life, I recommend taking it in baby steps. Start by releasing your negative emotional challenges using a tool such as the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT). Focus on changing one thought, such as I am tired, into I am full of energy, and see what happens.

Keep your mind open, and accept the idea that youre in control of your health. As you continue to let go of the limiting beliefs that you have been programmed with since you were a child, you will increasingly see that when it comes to the ability of your mind to heal you, there are NO limitations. The sky is the limit.

A pair of studies in the same journal (Arthritis and Rheumatism) suggest that acupuncture and an extract of turmeric (a spice found in curry) may both offer significant pain relief to arthritis patients.

A German research team found that a combination of acupuncture and conventional medicine can increase the quality of life of osteoarthritis patients.

Meanwhile, American researchers found that a special turmeric extract, composed largely of chemicals called curcuminoids, can prevent both acute and chronic rheumatoid arthritis.

In experiments on rats, the turmeric extract appeared to block inflammatory pathways associated with rheumatoid arthritis. As for acupuncture, the study of some 3,500 subjects showed that chronic osteoarthritis patients who received it in addition to their more traditional care showed marked improvement, with only 5 percent experiencing minor side effects.

Osteoarthritis, the most common type of arthritis in the United States, is a progressive degeneration of bone cartilage. Rheumatoid arthritis is an immunological disorder leading to painful inflammation of the lining of the joints.

Nearly one in five Americans, a total of 46 million, suffers from some form of arthritis. Another 23 million have undiagnosed chronic joint pain. Some 40 percent of arthritis patients in the United States have turned to alternative medicine to help them with their pain.

Sources:

* Arthritis and Rheumatism November 2006; 54(11): 3452-3464 (turmeric)

* Arthritis and Rheumatism November 2006; 54(11): 3485-3493 (acupuncture)

* iVillage October 30, 2006

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

This pair of studies underscores the growing interest conventional medicine has in complementary alternative medicine. It’s great to see more proof of the seemingly inevitable shift the U.S. health care system is taking from a model based on treating symptoms with expensive drug solutions to one that focuses on the foundational cause of disease.

Many systems utilizing these newly applied natural healing tools, such as acupuncture, naturopathic and chiropractic medicine, focus on health rather than disease. They understand that the absence of disease does not equate to health.

If you’ve been reading my newsletter for a while, you already know how acupuncture eases the pain associated with tension headaches and curcumin, the yellow compound in turmeric, blocks the development of cancer.

In India, where turmeric is widely used, the prevalence of the top four U.S. cancers — colon, breast, prostate and lung — is 10 times lower.

And there’s no doubt acupuncture is effective for many health problems; for example, in a recent study electrically stimulated acupuncture lowered blood pressure levels by 50 percent . If you aren’t crazy about needles, however, you do have other alternatives that can be just as helpful.

I have found that Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), a needle-free acupressure energy psychology tool that uses the same energy meridians as acupuncture, is a very effective method. I use it in my practice daily, and it can be a powerful means of headache relief.

In a study of 180 patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, Houston surgeons found that those who received “sham” arthroscopic surgery reported as much pain relief and improved mobility as patients who actually underwent the procedure.

In fact, the group that did not receive surgery reported better short-term functioning compared with the other patients.

It has been unclear why arthroscopic surgery for knee osteoarthritis helps some people with the condition. Dr. Moseley and his colleagues at Baylor College of Medicine, in Houston, decided to test whether arthroscopic surgery might be associated with a placebo effect.

After 2 weeks, patients assigned to sham surgery were doing better than the true surgery patients — probably, Dr. Moseley said, because they had been spared the trauma of surgery. After 2 years, the groups had made similar gains in walking and stair climbing, and their pain had eased to comparable degrees.

Because all patients received pain-killing drugs and none underwent physical therapy after their actual or sham surgery, Moseley credited the placebo effect for helping the sham-surgery group. “I was surprised,” he said, noting that when colleagues first proposed the possibility to him, he discounted it.

While this research is not the final word on arthroscopic surgery for knee arthritis, Dr. Moseley said it does suggest it may be time for surgeons to take a closer look at it.

“We, as surgeons,” he said, “may need to put our time into finding better and more effective treatments.”

Annual Meeting Of The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons San Francisco March 1, 2001

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Folks, you have to realize that knee surgery is an absolute LAST resort. You owe it to yourself or someone you love who is considering knee surgery to have NST done for them.

My therapist Jeff and I have been doing this work since November of 2000 and have prevented dozens of people from having to go for surgery. To date we have not had one person who has followed the instructions and finished treatments who has failed to respond.

There are only 100 of us in the country who do this work, but it is worth the 2-3 hour drive to see someone who can perform the NST as an alternative to surgery.

An exercise regime is as effective as surgery for people with a chronic pain in the front part of their knee, known as chronic patellofemoral syndrome (PFPS).

PFPS is often treated with arthroscopic surgery, in which equipment is inserted through small incisions in your knee to diagnose and fix the problem. However, there is little evidence that this treatment is the best option.

The study, conducted by researchers at The ORTON Research Institute in Helsinki, Finland, compared arthroscopy with exercise in 56 patients with PFPS.

One group of participants was treated with knee arthroscopy and an eight-week home exercise program, while a second group received only the exercise program.

After nine months, patients in both groups experienced similar reductions in pain and improvements in knee mobility. A follow-up conducted two years later still found no differences in outcomes between the two groups.

The only difference discovered was in cost: those who had received the surgery had to pay over $1,300 more than the exercise-only group.

The researchers concluded that arthroscopy is not a cost-effective treatment for PFPS.
Sources:

* Science Daily December 13, 2007

* BMC Medicine December 13, 2007, 5:38

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:
Arthroscopic surgery is performed on about 650,000 people in the United States every year, at a cost of about $5,000 per procedure.

Well, thats $5,000, and a lot of unnecessary recovery time, wasted because this surgery has been proven time and time again to work no better than a placebo.

While this may seem like a shocking statement, it was published in one of the most well-respected medical journals on the planet and was a double-blind, placebo-controlled, multicenter trial performed at some of the top U.S. hospitals.

This was, without question, one of the most amazing studies I have ever seen published, as it definitely proves the power of your mind in healing.

The home-based exercise program used in the study above also likely provided some relief of the symptoms, but when it comes to pain, your mind has an ability to heal you.

Folks, the placebo effect is REAL.

And when I say that, I mean that if you believe you will benefit from something, you will. And the more you focus your intention on this, the more youll find that you can manifest nearly any result you desire.

But there is one caveat: you must resolve any emotional blocks that are standing in your way first.

In the case of knee pain, this could be disbelief that the pain will go away, resentment that you have the pain, or even an unconscious desire to keep the pain because of the extra attention you gain from it.

As Bruce Lipton, PhD., a forerunner in the field of epigenetics and The New Biology, said in my recent interview with him:

A lot of people use the energy psychology just like a drug. Oh, youve got a pain here. If I do this, you can get rid of the pain. But heres the problem. A symptom is not generally the problem. A symptom is a reflection of a problem.

So the pain in your knee (or any location) is not what you should focus on relieving. Instead, you must get to the root of the problem, which started in your mind. If you simply relieve your knee pain without addressing the related emotional conflict, your body will manifest another ache, pain or illness to tell you that theres a problem with your system.

This is a new way of thinking about healing for most people. But if you look at it in terms of energy — pain is energy, and your mind is also energy — you can see how one directly influences the other.

Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT) is an extremely powerful tool that you can use to get to the root of your emotional conflicts, and to release them.

EFT is a form of psychological acupressure, based on the same energy meridians used in traditional acupuncture to treat physical and emotional ailments for over 5,000 years, but without the invasiveness of needles. Instead, simple tapping with the fingertips is used to input kinetic energy onto specific meridians on your head and chest while you think about your specific problem — whether it is a traumatic event, an addiction, pain, etc. — and voice positive affirmations.

I highly suggest that you explore this healing modality for yourself, and if you have an especially traumatic, complex or deep-seated emotional challenge to overcome that you find an EFT therapist to guide you.

Trimming damaged tissue through arthroscopic knee surgery does not relive pain and swelling in arthritic knees any better than simply flushing loose debris from the joint, according to new research.

The findings are based on three randomized studies, one of which found the treatments produced similar results in pain and physical function after two years. The other two studies produced low-quality evidence, according to researchers.

Potential side effects of arthroscopic surgery include a risk of infection and blood clots. Further, the surgery does not stop the progression of osteoarthritis, and symptoms are likely to return over time.

Osteoarthritis is a progressive disease that affects your hands, hips, shoulders and knees, especially in older people. The condition causes joint cartilage to break down, and loose bits of tissue can then cause pain, swelling and poor joint function.
Sources:

* Eurekalert January 24, 2008

* Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews 2008 Issue 1

Dr. Mercola’s Comments:

Arthroscopic knee surgery is one of the most unnecessary and useless surgeries out there. It works no better than a placebo surgery, and the proof of this was published in one of the most well-respected medical journals on the planet.

Despite this monumental finding, and numerous studies like the one above, 650,000 people in the United States undergo arthroscopic knee surgery every year. And with a cost of about $5,000 per procedure, that adds up to over $3 billion every year spent on a needless and non beneficial surgery.

What is Osteoarthritis?

Often, what prompts people to receive arthroscopic surgery is osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease in which the cartilage that covers the ends of the bones in your joint deteriorates, causing bone to rub against bone, and leading to pain and loss of movement.

This is the most common form of arthritis in the United States, and usually occurs in the older age group. It is more frequent in women than in men. The disease results from structural changes in the articular cartilage in the joints, usually those that are weight-bearing such as your spine and knees.

Potential contributing factors to this condition include:

* Obesity
* Nutritional deficiencies
* Continuous physical stress
* Glandular insufficiency
* Shortage of hydrochloric acid

Natural Options for Treating Osteoarthritis

Surgery is the absolute LAST option to consider if youre feeling pain and stiffness in your joints due to osteoarthritis. Again, please carefully review the major study that found arthroscopic surgery to work no better than placebo.

The patients truly believed that this expensive, invasive procedure would fix their problem, and superficially it appeared to do just that. But the same thing happened with those who received the placebo — a placebo unknown to them, of course.

What really healed their bodies were their own minds.

This is amazing testimony to the power your brain has at inducing healing changes in your body. Remember that whatever you focus your conscious attention on in the real world will typically be achieved. That is precisely what happened with this study.

So here you have a real world study, published in a respected journal, providing the theoretical underpinnings of why the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), and the principles of The New Biology, work. So in dealing with pain, dont underestimate the power of your mind — check out my EFT page to find out how you can begin to harness its power.

Also, for a good look at how EFT can help arthritis see 22 Years of Pain from Degenerative Arthritis Gone after Persistent EFT.

And, to help with the structural issues that can contribute to osteoarthritis, here are my top recommendations:

* Get plenty of omega-3 fats by taking a high-quality krill oil.
* Get moving with an exercise program.
* Eat a healthier diet based on the principles of the Total Health Program.
* Rely on safer anti-inflammatory alternatives.