Several years had passed since my accident and we were living in Spain at the time. The click in my knee had degenerated into a ‘trick knee’ that would sometimes buckle quite unexpectedly. Anti-inflammation and pain medication, including codeine, were readily available over the counter without prescription there. I used them only on particularly bad or particularly active days. But good days were coming far less frequently.

Then it was time for our trip, the dream vacation of a lifetime – a full year of bumming around Asia, the Pacific islands, and the Middle East. No schedule. Our bargain round-the-world tickets would let us linger anywhere as long as we liked. We could make our continuing flight reservations whenever we chose. Now how was I going to let my arthritis spoil a trip like that?

I knew there would be plenty of walking for museums, tours, sightseeing, and shopping. Then there’d be the scuba diving, swimming, boating, and beach bumming. A lot of activity – just the way we loved it. All joyfully accompanied by our vigorous eight-year-old son.

There was only one way I was going to make it through a year of that kind of activity: codeine. I gave no thought to the consequences of the abuse my already degenerating knees would suffer. Moreover, I wasn’t about to rob a moment of the joy and adventure of this trip from anyone, myself included. I’m not for a moment going to pretend that I wasn’t doing it for myself as well.

I didn’t have to stockpile a whole year’s supply of codeine. I knew it would be readily available in most of the countries we planned to visit. And it was. I’d go in and buy out the entire stock of two or three pharmacies at a time. It wasn’t that much; they only stocked a half dozen boxes each. (Or so they said.) Except for India; there codeine was really cheap and I could get a couple hundred tablets at just one pharmacy. I really stocked up in India.

No I didn’t turn into a junkie. Never got addicted. On boat cruises or lazy beach days, for example, I didn’t bother taking codeine at all. And I didn’t need it for swimming or diving either.

On museum, sightseeing, or shopping days, though, I’d really toss them down. And there were a lot of those days. But they were very low dose pills. I’d take several at a time – just about every four hours. Nobody noticed. Everyone’s used to my vitamin regimen – gulping down nearly twenty pills with every meal. It was just routine.

My non-codeine days let me know, though, what I was doing to my knees. The tension, the stiffness, and the discomfort made it clear. Masking the pain let me remain active, but vigorous activity is not recommended for arthritic joints. It only hastens the degeneration of the already damaged and far more vulnerable cartilage. And we prolonged it by extending our vacation far beyond our originally scheduled year. It was the best of times for us, and the worst of times for my knees.

*37\142\2*

What is CMO? Where does it come from? Cerasomal-cis-9-cetylmyristoleate is the scientific biochemical name. CMO is the trademarked commercial name. It is a perfectly natural substance found in several common animals such as cows, sheep, chickens, beavers, mice, and whales. As supplied in capsules, CMO is a highly purified and refined waxy ester prepared for oral administration. It is wholly derived from certain natural fatty bovine (beef) tissue from American cows.

*32\142\2*

As for other medications, a few days after starting CMO, you probably won’t need them any more. As your condition improves, try cutting down on the amounts of your usual medications. However, it’s best to avoid or reduce the use of steroids as much as possible and as soon as possible before or during the CMO therapy. The sooner they’re reduced or eliminated, the sooner you’re likely to get the maximum benefit from your CMO.

Always check with your physician before reducing or discontinuing any prescribed medications.

*27\142\2*

Does it work for both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis? Despite the conventional view that osteoarthritis is not an autoimmune disease, it seems quite clear that autoimmune processes are nevertheless involved in the continuing attacks against joint cartilage, just as they are in rheumatoid arthritis attacks. This is clearly contradictory to all existing medical theories, and we suspect that this may generate considerable controversy in the medical community. Nevertheless, it is quite evident to us that osteoarthritis, as well as rheumatoid arthritis, is an autoimmune disease.

The particles of damaged cartilage resulting from the traumas that initiate osteoarthritis are gobbled up by macrophages in the same way as the particles of cartilage resulting from rheumatoid arthritis. Regardless of whether they are produced as a result of some organism initiating rheumatoid arthritis or whether they are produced as the result of some physical trauma initiating osteoarthritis, the damaged cartilage particles trigger the same response from the macrophages that results in the faulty programming of the immune system’s memory T-cells.

Since CMO acts to halt the macrophage attacks against the cartilage, it has proved to be effective against both rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. That’s further evidence that osteoarthritis is an autoimmune disease. CMO has often proved beneficial for several other types of arthritis as well. A few of those other types include those associated with Reiter’s syndrome, ankylosing spondylitis, Sjogren’s syndrome, psoriatic arthritis, and Behcet’s syndrome. It has also been found to relieve various types of back pain of undetermined origin (probably arthritis related or having autoimmune components involving chronic inflammation).

*22\142\2*

CMO is a natural immunomodulator that literally acts to modulate the immune response and bring it back to normal. That’s far beyond the scope of any common arthritis medication. The affliction of arthritis is not a normal state of the body. It is not normal for the body to try to destroy healthy parts of itself. CMO acts to return the body to its normal state. It acts to normalize the immune system and stop those destructive attacks.

As a natural immunomodulator, it serves to naturally regulate a function, which in the case of arthritis, has been mistakenly programmed to direct certain immune cells to destroy healthy cartilage along with the cartilage that has been damaged by trauma or some invading organism. It’s very much like having a bad computer program. But once you fix the program, you fix the problem. And once it’s fixed, it stays fixed. Normally there’s no need for any further medication. People who were successfully treated nine or ten years ago have been free of the need for arthritis medication ever since.

That’s because CMO does not try to directly treat the symptoms of arthritis pain and inflammation. Instead, by getting at the cause of the problem, it stops the arthritic process itself. Once the errant immune system has been normalized the destruction stops, and the pain and inflammation are automatically relieved by your own body’s healing mechanisms.

In conventional treatment, attempts are made to control the pain and inflammation of arthritis through the use of ordinary medications. But even when the symptoms are controlled successfully, the attacks against your cartilage continue because those medications treat only the symptoms, not the cause. Eventually those medications begin to lose their effect. It’s not just because your body has built up tolerance, but also because the arthritic process has not been checked and it continues to worsen. Even drastically increasing the dosage of ordinary medications often doesn’t help much after a number of years.

Furthermore, relieving the pain in afflicted joints without improving their condition may actually be harmful. It can encourage the progressive destruction of those joints, which, in many cases, ought not to be overstressed. Any damaged joint is even more easily and more severely damage if it is abused. Masking the pain in such joints facilitates the possibility of such abuse. The case history related in Chapter 5 is a prime example of codeine abuse.

When the arthritic process itself remains unchecked, gradually more and more misprogrammed memory T-cells are generated, producing increasingly voluminous macrophage attacks against joint cartilage. As healthy cartilage is destroyed, your body tries to replace it by generating new cartilage. Unfortunately, the attacks eventually reach the point where they exceed your body’s ability to replace the amount destroyed. That’s when joint deterioration soon becomes a very serious and painful problem. Your body reaches a point where it quickly loses ground against the disease. Time and time again we’ve heard people say that for years their arthritis was just a bit of a bother – then suddenly it worsened.

Often, arthritis can progress from an annoyance into a serious crippling problem in just a few months. Obviously, it’s best to correct the problems of arthritis before any permanent damage has been inflicted.

*17\142\2*