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Hormone Balancing:

Natural Treatment and Cure for Arthritis

Raymond F. Peat, Ph.D.

(Formerly published in The Journal of the Rheumatoid Disease

Foundation, Volume 1, Number 1),

The Roger Wyburn-Mason and Jack M.

Blount Foundation for the Eradication of Rheumatoid Disease

AKA The Arthritis Trust of America

®

,

7376 Walker Road, Fairview, TN 37062

Copyright 1986

A very healthy 71-year-old man was under his house repairing

the foundation, when a support slipped and let the house fall far

enough to break some facial bones. During his recovery, he devel-

oped inflammatory arthritis in his hands. It is fairly common for

arthritis to appear shortly after an accident, a shock, or surgery, and

Hans Selye’s famous work with rats shows that when stress ex-

hausts the adrenal glands (so they are unable to produce normal

amounts of cortisone and related steroid hormones), osteoarthritis

and other “degenerative" diseases are likely to develop. But when

this man went to his doctor to “get something for his arthritis,” he

was annoyed that the doctor insisted on giving him a complete physi-

cal exam, and wouldn’t give him a shot of cortisone. The laboratory

examination showed low thyroid function, and the doctor prescribed

a supplement of thyroid extract, explaining that arthritis is one of the

many symptoms of hypothyroidism. The patient agreed to take the

thyroid, but for several days he grumbled about the doctor “fixing

something that wasn’t wrong” with him, and ignoring his arthritis.

But in less than two weeks, the arthritis had entirely disappeared. He

lived to be 88, but without a recurrence of arthritis. (See "Thyroid

Hormone Therapy: Cutting the Gordian Knot," and "Stress," http://

www.arthritistrust.org.)

Selye’s work with the diseases of stress, and the anti-stress

hormones of the adrenal cortex, helped many scientists to think more

clearly about the interaction of the organism with its environment,

but it has led others to focus too narrowly on hormones of the

adrenal cortex (such as cortisol and cortisone), and to forget the older

knowledge about natural resistance. There are probably only a few

physicians now practicing who would remember to check for hy-

pothyroidism in an arthritis patient, or in other stress-related condi-

tions. Hypothyroidism is a common cause of adrenal insufficiency,

but it also has some direct effects on the joint tissues. In chronic

hypothyroidism (myxedema and cretinism), knees and elbows are

often bent abnormally.

By the 1930s, it was well established that the resistance of the

organism depended on the energy produced by respiration under the

influence of the thyroid gland, as well as on the adrenal hormones,

and that the hormones or pregnancy (especially progesterone) could

substitute for the adrenal hormones. In a sense, the thyroid hormone

is the basic anti-stress hormone, since it is required for the produc-

tion of the adrenal and pregnancy hormones. A contemporary re-

searcher, F.Z. Meerson1, is putting together a picture of the biologi-

cal processes involved in adapting to stress, including energy pro-

duction, nutrition, hormones, and changes in cell structure.

While one of Selye’s earliest observations related gastro-intes-

tinal bleeding to stress, Meerson’s work has revealed in a detailed

way how the usually beneficial hormone of adaptation, cortisone,

can cause so many other harmful effects when its action is too pro-

longed or too intense.

Some of the harmful effects of the cortisone class of drugs

(other than gastro-intestinal bleeding) are: Hypertension, Osteoporo-

sis, delayed healing, atrophy of the skin, convulsions, cataracts, glau-

coma, protruding eyes, psychic derangements, menstrual irregulari-

ties, and loss of immunity allowing infections or cancer to spread.

While normal thyroid function is required for the secretion of

the adrenal hormones, the basic signal which causes cortisone to be

formed is a drop in the blood glucose level. The increased energy

requirement of any stress tends to cause the blood sugar to fall

slightly, but hypothyroidism itself tends to depress blood sugar. The

person with low thyroid function is more likely than a normal person

to require cortisone to cope with a certain amount of stress. How-

ever, if large amounts of cortisone are produced for a long time, the

toxic effects of the hormone begin to appear. According to Meerson,

heart attacks are provoked and aggravated by cortisone produced

during stress. (Meerson and his colleagues have demonstrated that

the progress of a heart attack can be halted by a treatment including

natural substances such as vitamin E and magnesium.)

While hypothyroidism makes the body require more cortisone

to sustain blood sugar and energy production, it also limits the ability

to produce cortisone, so in some cases stress produces symptoms

resulting from a deficiency of cortisone, including various forms of

arthritis and more generalized types of chronic inflammation. Since

cortisol is formed as one of the last steps in a series of reactions,

glandular exhaustion means that a whole group of other steroids is

depleted, before cortisol or cortisone. I believe that the safest way to

handle a steroid deficiency is to supplement the precursors of the raw

materials, so that a normal balance of the various substances is pre-

served.

Often, a small physiological dose of natural hydrocortisone can

help the patient meet the stress, without causing harmful side effects.

While treating the symptoms with cortisone for a short time, it is

important to try to learn the basic cause of the problem, by checking

for hypothyroidism, vitamin A deficiency, protein deficiency, a lack

of sunlight, etc. (I suspect that ultraviolet light on the skin directly

increases the skin’s production of steroids, without depending on

other organs.) Using cortisone physiologically, rather than pharma-

cologically, it is not likely to cause the serious problems mentioned

above.

Stress-induced cortisone deficiency is thought to be a factor in

a great variety of unpleasant conditions, from allergies to ulcerative

colitis, and in some forms of arthritis. The stress which can cause a

cortisone deficiency is even more likely to disturb formation of

progesterone and thyroid hormone, so the fact that cortisone can

relieve symptoms does not mean that it has corrected the problem.

Besides the thyroid, the other class of adaptive hormones which

are often out of balance in the diseases of stress, is the group of

hormones produced mainly by the gonads: the “reproductive hor-

mones.” During pregnancy, these hormones serve to protect the

developing baby from the stresses suffered by the mother, but the

same hormones function as a part of the protective anti-stress system

in the non-pregnant individual, though as a lower level.

Some forms of arthritis are known to improve or even to disap-

pear during pregnancy. As mentioned above, the hormones of preg-

nancy can make up for a lack of adrenal cortex hormones. During a

healthy pregnancy, many hormones are present in increased amounts,

including the thyroid hormones. Progesterone, which is the most

abundant hormone of pregnancy, has both anti-inflammatory and

anesthetic actions, which would be of obvious benefit in arthritis.

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