Can Your Immune System be Manipulated to Cure Arthritis?

Scientists now think that your immune system actually does try to reduce the inflammation that coincides with arthritis.

The only problem: it does not do it very well.

But a new way to boost your immune system in specific way to tackle arthritis is in sight. And that may completely CURE, not just treat, arthritis.

Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have just made a discovery that will bring enormous hope to arthritis sufferers.

They published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Before explaining how this potential new treatment works, a crash course in immune system function is necessary.

When a part of your body is injured, your immune system sends white blood cells to the location to repair the damage.

It also sends macrophages, which are the cells tasked with clearing away the waste material of the repair.

This waste material includes the bacteria that try to infect the damaged body part, and the white blood cells that die after doing their work.

The only problem with these useful macrophages is that they use pro-inflammatory messenger cells called cytokines to kill the potentially deadly bacteria that infect wounds.

In other words, cytokines kill wound-infecting bacteria and are therefore essential for our survival, but they also cause most of the excessive inflammation in our bodies that is harmful.

With the crash course out of the way, think of how arthritis works:

In osteoarthritis, the cartilage in your joints wears away, which prompts your immune system to send white blood cells and macrophages to conduct the repairs.

In rheumatoid arthritis, your immune system mistakenly believes that your joints are damaged and sends these cells to repair the imaginary damage.

In both cases, the macrophages dump a huge number of pro-inflammatory cytokines into your joints. This is the inflammation that makes arthritis so painful and damages your joints so badly.

In the new study, the University of Edinburgh scientists show that your immune system actually does try to stop the pro-inflammatory cytokines from escaping; it just does not do it well enough.

This is how it works:

When the white blood cells die, they produce peptides called alpha defensins. When the macrophages clean up the waste material, including the dead white blood cells, they absorb these alpha defensins along with it.

These alpha defensins then inhibit the ability of the macrophages to secrete harmful pro-inflammatory cytokines.

The more alpha defensins, the less cytokines, and the less cytokines, the less destructive inflammation!

Does this not mean that you are then vulnerable to bacterial infection?

By injecting alpha defensins into damaged rat paws, the scientists found that this was not the case. The macrophages retained their ability to kill bacteria without massive amounts of pro-inflammatory cytokines.

The scientists hope that this research can lead to an arthritis treatment wherein a doctor can inject alpha defensins straight into your joints to keep pro-inflammatory cytokines under control.

In fact, if they can work out a way to extract the alpha defensins from the white blood cells that die constantly throughout your body, they can inject them straight back at the location where they are needed.

The same thing can be done naturally using nothing but simple diet and lifestyle changes. Here is the step-by-step strategy I successfully used to heal my arthritis…