Jane’s recovery is so miraculous, researchers made it a case study in the medical journal The Lancet. According to the study, Jane’s pain started when she was 30.
At age 55, her X-rays showed spinal disc degeneration, with some discs showing signs of osteoarthritis. The doctors were baffled as to what was causing it. Until Jane mentioned that she drank 3-4 pints of tea every day.
You see, tea is loaded with fluoride. And as I mentioned in my last message to you, fluoride can cause serious joint pain. In fact, just 5-6 mg of fluoride a day can lead to painful joints. And the damage this dose does to joints looks just like arthritis on an x-ray.
How much fluoride does tea contain? Most cups contain between 1 to 5 mgs. But some contain a lot more. One study found that drinking a 32-oz glass of iced tea could give you 8-9 mgs of fluoride. That’s a massive dose.
Well, Jane was drinking so much tea that she was getting about 30 mg of fluoride a day. And it was destroying her joints.
Jane had a classic case of skeletal fluorosis. This condition can cause chronic joint pain, arthritic symptoms, back pain, and even calcification of ligaments and other soft tissues. It can even cause kidney problems.
Skeletal fluorosis is a lot more common than you might think. One study from Inner Mongolia (where they don’t even fluoridate the water) found that 31% of habitual tea drinkers had skeletal fluorosis. Here are some of the symptoms they had:
• 39.2% had joint pain
• 26.1% had pain in the lower back
• 16.9% had numbness in their extremities
• 4.1% had tetany (spasms in the hands and feet)
• 3.8% had hand and foot rigidity
Another study looked at tea drinkers in the UK, where tea drinking is common. They found that excessive fluoride intake from black tea is causing an epidemic of chronic arthritis. The author concluded, “Some cases of pain diagnosed as rheumatism or arthritis may be due to subclinical fluorosis, which is not radiologically demonstrable.”
In the U.S., researchers conducted a large-scale study of 76,000 women. Their ages ranged from 50 to 79. The researchers found that women who drink more than 4 cups of black tea per day have a 78% greater chance of developing rheumatoid arthritis compared to those women who never drink tea.
The researchers also reported that women who consume any amount of black tea, even small quantities, per day, have a 40% risk of developing rheumatoid arthritis.
What You Can Do
Fortunately, the fix is easy. You just have to stop drinking tea.
Jane did exactly that. And the results were amazing.
Just 3 months after she stopped drinking tea, The Lancet said, “she reported that her pain had diminished to the point where she was almost able to go without analgesics.” And she was able to walk so well that she got a job that required a considerable amount of walking.
But it didn’t stop there. After 6 months, she was virtually free of pain. She stopped taking all of her pain drugs. And her life had returned to normal.
Imagine that! Jane suffered from debilitating joint pain for 25 years – all because she was an avid tea drinker. Once she stopped drinking tea, her pain disappeared.
It takes a while for your body to get rid of the fluoride. So be patient. And, as I said last week, you can take up to 50 mg of iodine to help speed up the process.
If you have any chronic pain and drink a lot of tea, consider avoiding tea for 6 months. It could change your life.
One final note: You may not have to avoid tea for the rest of your life. But you definitely need to drink it in moderation. And don’t drink it every day. Give your body time to get rid of the fluoride. Also consider taking 12.5 mg of iodine on the days you do drink it.
As I mentioned last week, iodine and fluoride compete for absorption in the body. And since iodine has a much higher molecular weight it wins, thereby driving the fluoride out of your body.