My own journey to improved health has been a long one. At 24, I was diagnosed with arthritis. Knowing nothing else, I went down the road of conventional western medicine. (You can read about my discovery of arthritis in yesterday’s post.) But I was really worried about the drugs I was on and what it meant for me.

After reading everything I could find on arthritis and auto-immune diseases (of which allergies are another one), I started to make use of the most commonly cited natural strategies for each of them. After all, both of these conditions ran in my family.

I figured there had to be a pattern.

Vitamin C is known to be a mild anti-inflammatory. (As a tip for those with allergies, I have successfully used it to hold off an allergic reaction until I could get my hands on some antihistamine.) I’d never taken Vitamin C so I started and slowly increased my dosage. By the time I was consuming 3000 - 5000 mg of Vitamin C a day, I was able to come off the strong painkiller that I’d been taking.

I kept reading everything I could. I was a library science student at the time, and had access to many information databases that weren’t easily available to the public. Based on what I read, I then tried removing red meat from my diet - both it and gluten are known contributors to inflammation. In fact, I read many articles by MD’s at the time who had stumbled upon a dietary correlation between increasing arthritis inflammation and what patients ate.

When I stopped eating red meat, I was able to get off the anti-arthritis medication.

Within a few months of my emotional visit to the hospital chapel, I was off all drugs and pain-free. While I managed to do this on my own, I’ve been the happy client of a good naturopath ever since - after all, I’m not trained in any form of medicine and it helps to have someone working with me who is.

The best news of all is that my arthritis never returned. At 48, my joints show no signs of arthritis despite the agony I was in from age 24 to 26.

My point is this: “anecdotal” is not a bad word. Much of what I read was based on reports from arthritis patients themselves or practitioners who had noticed certain patterns in their patients. Anecdotal evidence may have saved both my joints and my quality of life.

My new “radical” approach to all things medical has stood me in good stead ever since. When I realized I was still not feeling completely well a couple of years later (even though arthritis was out of the picture), I went to an MD who tested for food allergies. I made dietary changes and followed his suggestions for vitamins. Again, I improved - when my regular doc had found nothing.

When my children came along, I expected allergies could enter our lives again. Sure enough, the first time my son had gluten, he came up in hives! I simply picked up my research hat again and determined that I would find a way to help him - rather than saddle him with a chronic condition and drugs for the rest of his life. He’s now free of reactions to food, although we’re still working on his environmental allergies.

I also had to deal with allergies with my daughter. But I knew what to look for right away. She now appears clear of them.

So far, so good.

In 2009, I’ll detail my and my family’s journey through complementary medicine, including NAET - which has worked really well for our food allergy issues. I’ll also talk more about our use of homeopathics and supplements of all kinds including dietary changes that have made all the difference. I’ll pass on a few tips for finding a good naturopath or other alternative practitioner. At the same time, I’ll keep following the research on new medical approaches and promising conventional treatments. After all, I’m not against western medicine - I just think that you can use the best of both worlds and benefit!

Happy New Year from Be Allergy Wise. May we be big part of your health journey in 2009.