Huffington Post Blog - February 2013
by Amy Rothenberg, ND
The New York Times Magazine published a compelling piece this week, "The Boy With a Thorn in His Joints" by Susannah Meadows, written by a mother of little boy who had been diagnosed with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). After pursuing appropriate diagnostic workups and trying the conventional medical approaches to no avail, Ms. Meadows and her family decided to pursue less conventional approaches, including looking at diet, natural supplements and botanical medicines. Their story has a guardedly happy ending, the boy remains mostly symptom-free past the one-year mark. His only setbacks occurred after taking antibiotics and after eating gluten. Juvenile idiopathic arthritis does sometimes spontaneously remit, though less commonly when many joints are involved, as in his case. Meadows makes a compelling case for at least looking into some less conventional approaches.