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About Barbara Allan
Barbara's History with
Arthritis
 At
age 25 Barbara Allan became one of the over 9.1 million
people in the United States with an autoimmune-type
arthritis. Her arthritis was triggered by a bout of
bacterial dysentery caused by eating food tainted with
a bacterium called Shigella. She was on vacation at
the time.
Reactive arthritis was the name given to her condition.
In many respects, it is very similar to rheumatoid arthritis.
In fact, she eventually got well using methods proven
to work for rheumatoid arthritis.
The onset of her arthritis was about 6 weeks after
the dysentery. The arthritis came on very suddenly and
left her in chronic, overwhelming pain that often made
it difficult to walk even a few steps without passing
out. Sometimes the pain was so bad that she was incapable
of rational thought, or any thought at all. Sometimes
her hands hurt so much she couldn't even hold silverware
well enough to feed herself. For years she lived with
the loss of many things that she had valued highly:
her health, her mobility and to a some extent the use
of her mind. She lost friendships, status, the ability
to continue as a graduate student, and the ability to
hold a regular job.
Usually this type of arthritis goes away within a month,
but her case went on for years. Her doctors didn't know
what to do with her. Nothing they tried did much good.
Her illness led her to devote 11 years of her life
to systematically researching and personally testing
promising alternative therapies until she perfected
the nine secrets that successfully cured her
own difficult disease.
When she first got sick, she started reading everything
she could get her hands on related to the latest scientific
research on the causes of arthritis and possible new
treatments. In a doctoral program in molecular biology
at Washington University in St. Louis, one of the major
medical research universities in the country, this type
of information was readily available to her. When she
was in too much pain to leave her apartment, friends
brought copies of journal articles to her. Unfortunately,
the most promising research was years away from possible
clinical trials, and the current cutting edge treatments
were not very effective.
After four and a half years of conventional treatments
that did little or nothing to improve her condition,
she decided that if she continued to follow the conventions
dictated by the current medical model, she was unlikely
to get well. Even those in the medical field are aware
that few patients treated by rheumatologists can expect
any lasting or substantial improvements. She needed
a new plan.
In her next phase of the search, she started evaluating
everything she came across in the lay press that promised
to help arthritis, pain, or rebuild health. Not surprisingly,
much was silly or potentially dangerous. In this category
are claims that arthritis can be cured by burial in
horse manure, taking cocaine, topical application of
motor oil, brake fluid, gasoline, kerosene, and lighter
fluid, and sitting in inactive uranium mines.
However, as she avidly read material targeted to the
lay public, she did find many treatments that made sense
and that were supported by studies published in reputable
research journals. She applied these promising alternative
therapies to her own condition. Some helped and some
didn't.
Eventually she was able to completely overcome her
arthritic condition using the nine secrets mentioned
in the title of her upcoming book. Each method provided
a lasting and dramatic improvement in her condition.
After years of having difficulty just walking from one
room to another, she now enjoys walking many miles a
week and goes on 30-50 mile bike rides for fun. She
has regained full use of her hands and her hips. The
pain and fatigue are gone. In addition, her health has
improved each of the last 8 years since she discovered
these methods. She credits this to the fact that she
has continued to use and refine the health promoting
measures described in Conquering Arthritis,
allowing her body to heal at deeper and deeper levels.
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