Sarah Joubert

Tereza Okava wrote: I also can't recommend highly enough temperature therapy- soaking the hands in very warm water, especially with Epsom salts. Massage with warm oil or cream. My physical therapist set me up with paraffin soaks one time (you simply put your hands in warm paraffin, keep them there for a while, and later take it off) and it was absolutely magical.  

Thank you for that valuable advice. I do try to get her to rest her hands on a hot water bottle- it works for her shoulder, but the hands soak in Epsom salts sounds great- and a lovely way to pamper her. She lives alone most of the year but  I visit in the winter months while I'm working in the UK and then she lives with me off and on for 4 months so I get to motivate her more. Hopefully she will be moving to Spain and living with us next year, she's much better in the heat.
When you say "parafin" I presume you mean  "liquid parafin" which is a lubricant  and not "lamp oil" used in storm lanterns for light? That's something I could try next year.
I hope you don't have too bad a winter down south, although friends in South Africa are already complaining about the cold and frost so it might be a longer winter than usual.

M Ljin wrote:
Thinking more, horsetail keeps popping into my mind, which has a reputation for being good for connective tissue, and not only that but also is supportive of the kidneys. There is some information on my favorite websites, which supports the idea of using it for supporting the joints:

https://pfaf.org/user/Plant.aspx?LatinName=Equisetum+arvense
http://naeb.brit.org/uses/search/?string=Equisetum

I found it interesting to hear about native Alaskans harvesting large quantities of horsetail to feast on the stem juice. I tried last year and it is delicious! The plant reminds me via the doctrine of signatures makes me think of synovial fluid, and the overall jointed nature of the plant. Not that I am pushing or recommending the plant—I don’t have experience of using them for osteoarthritis. It could be something to try with further research and if it feels right.

It may be it's high in magnesium? a diet rich in cartilage ( lots of bone broth) would provide plenty glucossamine?

M Ljin wrote:In certain forms of medicine, there sometimes is a focus on various qualities in the body, like moisture, dryness, heat, cold, etc.  Osteoarthritis sounds like it would have something to do with lack of moisture—maybe not literally that the joints are dry, but that this quality of moisture is less present (if that makes any sense? It does to me)
Edit: maybe what I mean to say is that there is less of what holds onto water in the joints, ie cartilage and synovial fluid.

It makes sense to have adequate quality fluid levels. I think part of the problem is the amount of sugars IN her fluids- inflamitary. Unfortunately, trying to get her to drink more teas, cut down on the sugar in her coffee and not so much fruit cordial (even though she makes it herself) meets with resistance. At 80, one probably feels you've earned the right to enjoy what you drink and the right to complain about hands that have done 65 years of typing to put food on the table! So we'll try a workaround. Thanks for your help.

Hi Anne, thanks for your post. My mother is 82, she does Tai Chi once a week-not as often as she should. I have been encouraging her to walk but winter weather in the UK makes that tough on her old body.
As you age, your body produces less hyaluronic acid and apparenlty we use/ resynthesise a 3rd of it each day. Which means she is going to ache more -and even more if she's more physical. The idea is to supplement her hyaluronic acid levels - She already has magnesium in her diet but maybe not the 400mg rda. It may be why the G and C supplements she takes have not  worked -they have not been sythesised into hyaluronic acid due to a shortage of magnesium.
The aim is to get her to a level of comfort where she can excersise more and thus improve her allround mobility, balance and health. I doubt she will ever be totally pain free.
I have since discoverd one can buy hyaluronic acid in powder form, which bypasses the need for glucosamin and chondroitin. If I add the recommended dose to bone broth, it should be a healthy, absorbable form while giving her extra amino acids and minerals. In the meantime, the CBD cream eases her joints for a bit.
The dog is easier- she'll eat chicken feet and prawn carapaces all day long!

M Ljin wrote:

The average 70 kg (150 lb) person has roughly 15 grams of hyaluronan in the body, one third of which is turned over (i.e., degraded and synthesized) per day.[6]

So it sounds as if maybe one would need to eat it constantly to have benefits, if the issue is the body isn’t making enough of it.

Glucosamine is one of the most abundant monosaccharides.[2] It is produced commercially by the hydrolysis of shellfish exoskeletons

Thank you M Ljin for that reference from Wiki, it has enabled me to reserch more. This is what I have found about how the 3 interrelate using google AI search:'
Commercially they use hydrochloric acid hydrolysis on crustacean chitin to extract the glucosamide with an average 40% yield rate from a 1/40 solid/liquid ratio. It's a complicated process involving heating, straining drying to get a powder form. The body then uses magnesium to synthesise Hyaluronic Acid in the body. Hyaluronic acis is an important component of sinovial fluid, it also aids cartilage health.
If the body uses 5g hyaluronan a day, that means the rda is 5000mg hyaluronan, how much glucosamine is needed to synthesise 5000mg hyaluronan?, how much bone broth would one need to consume daily?

I am researching how to increase the levels of these to help increase sinovial fluid and cartilage maintenance. For my mother  who has osteoarthritis in her fingers primarily but elsewhere too, and my aging dog who is known to have hip displasia and has just broken her leg. Most of the info out there is "buy pills"- but be careful what you buy blah blah blah. At the end of the day, how do I know the body will absorb enough of the product to actually make a difference? I have read many of the mixed/poor results of trials -they all involve taking pills. My mother has taken pills - no difference. My dog can't tell me if they're helping or not.

To get it naturally shellfish and bone broth from high cartilage areas are reccomended. I want to try bone broth from cartilage rich foods like chicken necks and feet and prawns/shrimp/crayfish. What I cannot find is how to ensure you get the mg levels required to make a difference. The guielines are eat oily fish 2 -3 times a week and drink broth. I cannot find how much condroitin and glucosamine mg per ml the broth contains. So how do i work out a daily dose ? I do understand that all bone broths are not created equal but there must be a starting point somewhere-does anyone know it?

Jill Dyer wrote:I can't grow Phaseolus coccineus either!  Drying out of pollen also affects the tomato plants. . .

I am so glad I am not the only one struggling to grow beans! I grew them for years on the hot highveld in South Africa-like weeds! But our rainfall was more summer showers so probably more humidity. Successful in the UK too. The  combination of hot, dry, windy conditions here must just be too much for them to cope. Interesting about tomatoes. My friendly neighbouring farmer (who speaks spanish very well), surprisingly cannot understand me ;-) so I have trouble finding out how/where he grows such exceptional tomatoes. He keeps us stocked up but it's disheartening to struggle so. Interestingly, the self seeding tomatoes take off really early so we get early season tomatoes, they die back in the heat of the summer and don't come back when it cools down a bit in September, but then my planted varieties seem to get a growth spurt and I had tomatoes into November last year. So the reduced pollination in high summer makes sense and I'll try altering my sowing dates for early and late tomatoes. Thanks for that!

Robert Ray wrote:Burra, did your runner beans produce a tuber to eat?

Interesting! I don't know about Burra, but I got bigger roots than I would expect under my runners-I may have pulled them early in disgust. Are they any good? Do they store well underground/in a cellar?

Burra Maluca wrote:I'd recommend finding someone near to you who grows beans successfully and begging a shovel-full of soil from their bean-patch to mix into a slurry to inoculate your seed, just in case your soil doesn't have enough of the right bugs.

Thanks for that advice. I do have a vacuum sealed bag of "innoculent" that I got along with some akfalfa/lucerne seedsI bought several years ago. I decided not to plant the alfalfa and waste the innoculent as I quickly learned the hard way how everything struggles without water in these conditions-sound a bit like your 1st property in Portugal! Hopefully it is still viable because, even though vacuum sealed, the pack says it expired years ago. But we all know not to trust best before dates.
So that's why my runner beans don't fruit! I will look at those other bean families.
Thanks's for taking the time to reply.

Rebekah Harmon wrote:

Sarah Joubert wrote: I'm willing to change my diet to build a better world, but I can't see a nutritional reason to force someone to eat sunchokes every day!

HAH! Sarah! Thats hilarious! And I totally agree with you. They aren't bad on a salad. I could eat a little one every day on the side somehow. But they aren't a delicious way to fill a plate.

Thank you, I'm glad someone saw the funny side of it! These are serious times but we need to laugh at ourselves occasionally.