French Maritime Pine Bark

This is an update on the pine bark extract. It started working again and very well, but I noticed every three or four months that it would not work 100 %. The one really great think about pine bark extract is there are no known side effects and it is a strong antioxident. Anyways so every few months I would have about three weeks of mostly no hot flashes, just occasionly would get warm. After about a year I upped my intake to two pills per day. Worked wonderful for a good year at least. I am now going through actual menapause I believe, since I haven't had a period for about five months. Pine Bark still works amazingly well, but here and there I will get a hot flash. Decided to up it to three per day because I don't want to have them at all. I figure my body is going through the severe change right now. So three a day is working well, just having an occasional semi flash! Still swear by this stuff, since no side effects.

I got melasma from threading a few weeks back. I had it real bad years back from waxing (yes you can get it from waxing, its your skins own way of protecting that skin that gets repeatedly yanked), and it seemed to have faded over the many years since I waxed regularly. However, a dark triangle-shaped patch meeting at my nose appeared on my upper lip after a threading session when the sharp redness there went away. It didn't do that where I tweeze normally, just where it was ultra sensitive and where they said they "don't go up that high" :(. Pycnogenol has been available for a while, but I never bought into it until now bc I didn't believe it did anything I needed. Anything to make my perma-ink mustache go away. I have some on order.

Hi Merryanne, As for the beet juice, I use a pressure cooker to cook my beets (1 cup water with a tsp on ACV) I drink the dark red liquid afterwards and find it immediately relaxing and calming. I take pycnogenol as a general anti-oxidant. Noticeable effects are with endurance and concentration... Lifting brain fog, and asthma. Effects are similar for me to Rhodiola.. Other claimed effects (though hard to measure) are skin elasticity, heart, eye health, varicose veins. I take 100mg day, (50 morning, 50 evening)

I couldn't believe this. New french study shows this works, I've been on this for a week. No change so far. The study said 4 weeks got relieve for participants. Hope this works for me and everyone who suffers from insatiable ringing. It's available online and in stores everywhere. Best wishes.

http://ihealthbulletin.com/blog/2010/10/20/pycnogenol-naturally-relieves-tinnitus/

I will attempt to reply here on the RA disease portion, since any immune imbalance that can be corrected will also likely help the other problems. First, RA is classed as an autoimmune disease, where the body's own antibodies are found to be attacking "self" cells and tissues.

Here is a overall basic diagram of the entire human immune system, showing the TH1 and TH2 sub-branches over on the left:
http://books.nap.edu/books/0309057973/xhtml/images/p20007cc6g432001.jpg

First question is when does the immune system not perform at good efficiency and balance, and the answer is 'when the terrain (body and all tissues) are ACIDIC'! So the very condition that allows diseases to invade prevents proper optimal functioning of immunity. That must be made right, back to an alkaline state, otherwise many remedies just won't take.

Best, simplest and cheapest remedy by far for restoring a high= alkaline pH is given by Ted here, under BICARBONATE FORMULA:
https://www.earthclinic.com/remedies/lemons.html#BICARBONATEFORMULA

On to some RA remedies:
French Maritime Pine bark extract aka Pycnogenol, or GSE instead:
http://www.thehealthierlife.co.uk/natural-health-articles/arthritis/pycnogenol-help-sufferers-knee-osteoarthritis-01022.html

When I asked him to elaborate, he told me that he'd never used grape seed extract (GSE) to treat arthritis because he'd never heard of using either GSE or Pycnogenol for arthritis symptoms. Dr. Spreen: 'My comment was due to the fact that, 1) Pycnogenol is expensive, and 2) grape seed extract (much cheaper and more ubiquitous) has been found to supply the same active ingredients. Both are famous for their antioxidant properties. '

Both contain about 40 similar compounds classed as OPCs, by the way as the active ingredients. Dr. Spreen noted that he would recommend 200mg per day of GSE, ...

Next possible nutrient to try for the RA is "ORGANIC GERMANIUM, aka Ge-132":
http://www.orthomolecular.org/library/jom/1987/pdf/1987-v02n02-p083.pdf
Note this article is from 1987! It's been quite well researched in Japan. It is very widely available on the net health stores and locally.

Third possibility is plant sterols/sterolins, available generically. Based on the biological activities described above, most studies to date have investigated the ability of plant sterols to control inflammation or induce a shift from a predominantly humoral immune response to a more protective cellular response (i. E. TH2 to TH1 shift)

These supplements take time, 1 to 3 months, and as shown may give only a percentage improvement. There's also possibility #4 niacinamide, widely available and cheap. There is a post under 'Trigger Finger' from OCT 5 on it for arthritis. Dosage is in there, too:

https://www.earthclinic.com/cures/trigger_finger.html#GF_47032

Look into Pycnogenol and Resveratrol... Pycnogenol (bark extract) can help with micro-circulation to the eyes.. It is well researched & plenty of info. On the web & this on eye health & Resveratrol from Weil's blog...
http://www.drweilblog.com/home/2010/7/11/resveratrol-for-eye-health.html

I started having hot flashes and for a couple of months did nothing. Then I read in our paper that pine bark helps with hot flashes. I took one pill each day and it started working for me right away. I had no hot flashes for at least six months. Then one week i didn't take it everyday because I forgot and now it doesn't seem to be helping any. I started taking black cohash and it doesn't help at all. Please try the pine bark because it worked fantastic on me with no side effects. They usually recommend one pill in the morning and one at night but I only did the one in the morning.

I read on internet that taking horse chestnut orally will cure hemorrhoids, so I'm taking that right now and I think that it's working. Horse chestnut is also good for chronic venous insufficiency or swelling of the legs which was the main reason I was taking it in the first place. The swelling in my left leg is slowly subsiding but I think it's working for that also. Horse chestnut is good for also coughs, arthritis, and some other things I can't remember at this time. Pycnogenol is suppose to be better for hemorrhoids than horse chestnut, but I don't know, I'm just trying the horse chestnut for now, and if I'm not satisfied with the results, I will try pycnogenol instead, in which it's supposed to work better for leg swelling