She had started a new job which had good health insurance, so her Rheumatologist decided to put her on Humira, a monthly injection which, according to their website:

HUMIRA is a medicine called a TNF blocker, a type of protein that blocks the action of TNF-α, a substance made by your body’s immune system. People with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have too much TNF-α in their bodies. The extra TNF-α can attack normal healthy body tissue and cause inflammation especially in the tissues of your bones, cartilage, and joints. HUMIRA can help block the damage that too much TNF-α can cause. HUMIRA may prevent further damage to the bones and joints of moderate to severe rheumatoid arthritis patients, and may help the ability to perform daily activities.

Humira worked GREAT for her, She felt fantastic just days after her first injection. However, one warning which states you should call your physician immediately is “warm, red, or painful skin.” After her second injection she developed a serious skin rash which was a reaction to the drug and use was discontinued.

So now she was not taking any medication while waiting for insurance to approve a different treatment of Remicade. Her RA got so bad she had trouble with normal activities of daily living. She was in serious pain and absolutely miserable. Remicade is another (in fact one of the first) TNF blockers and according to their website:

REMICADE targets specific proteins in the body’s immune system to help control the development of inflammation, significantly reducing painful symptoms in diseases such as plaque psoriasis, rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, adult Crohn’s disease, pediatric Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, and ankylosing spondylitis.

Remicade worked well for awhile. It wasn’t as effective as Humira was and instead of a monthly injection that you could do at home required a trip to the hospital for a monthly IV infusion. It did work well enough to continue using until her body began to develop anti-bodies against the drug. Her rheumatologist stated she had only heard about a couple of other patients that this happened with so once again treatment stopped.

We increased her Omega-3 supplementation to help keep the inflammation down until insurance approved yet another drug: Orencia.

Orencia is also a monthly infusion at the hospital but instead of blocking TNF, “works in a fundamentally different way than any other rheumatoid arthritis treatment. ORENCIA works early in the RA inflammatory process at the T-cell level and can reduce the activation of T cells, which reduces the activation of other cells in the RA inflammatory process.”

T-Cells are an important white blood cell that are crucial to your bodies immune system. They help fight viral and bacterial infections. And that is the power (and the problem) behind Orencia: it lowers your immune system so that it can not attack your own body (as is seen in auto-immune diseases). In fact, that is how ALL RA treatments work. They don’t fix or heal or cure RA, they lower your immune system so that it can’t damage your own body as much.

This is great if you are in serious pain and having trouble simply walking or cutting your food or sleeping because the pain is so intense. But there are serious side effects that come along with this. This list is from the Orencia Website:

Possible Side Effects of ORENCIA® (abatacept)
ORENCIA can cause serious side effects including:

Serious infections. Patients receiving ORENCIA have a higher chance of getting infections including pneumonia, and other infections caused by viruses, bacteria, or fungi. Call your doctor immediately if you feel sick or get any of the following signs of infection: fever, feel very tired, cough, feel flu-like, or warm, red or painful skin.

Allergic reactions. Allergic reactions can happen on the day of treatment or the day after receiving ORENCIA. Tell your doctor or get emergency medical help right away if you have hives, swollen face, eyelids, lips, tongue, throat or trouble breathing.

Cancer (malignancies). Certain kinds of cancer have been reported in patients receiving ORENCIA. It is not known if ORENCIA increases your chance of getting certain kinds of cancer.

Vaccinations. You should not receive ORENCIA with certain types of vaccines. ORENCIA may cause some vaccinations to be less effective.

Respiratory problems in patients with COPD. You may get certain respiratory problems more often if you receive ORENCIA and have COPD, including: worsened COPD, pneumonia, cough, or trouble breathing.

The more common side effects with ORENCIA in both adults and children are headache, upper respiratory tract infection, sore throat, and nausea. Other side effects in children may include diarrhea, cough, fever, and abdominal pain.

This list is pretty standard for Remicade, Humira, Enbrel, and other RA drug treatments.

So we decided to do something different. She is still on Orencia which is working decent, but we recently went to a Chiropractor that talked at my school who specializes in internal medicine as well. He stated that he treats RA almost exclusively as an allergic reaction to something we eat. He draws blood for a test called ELISA/ACT which is an allergy test for over 450 different things including common things we eat, preservatives, food coloring, and environmental factors.

He got the results back the other day and called to tell her to immediately cease and desist the eating of all dairy, peanuts, ginseng, bakers yeast and of all things: chicken.

We are going in tonight to talk to him in person and get the details about the test and put together a game plan to try to make her better. The beautiful thing about this, is that instead of just minimizing the progression of the disease like the chemotheraputic approach, it actually removes the cause of the disease and hence… the disease itself!

We are hoping that this works well enough to get her off all drug treatments and back to normal, healthy, pain free living. We are really excited about this and will post from time to time about her progress and how things are working. Until then, Live Happy Live Healthy!