It’s 12:43 AM and I am wide awake. Sharp pains shoot through my toes and fingers from nerve pain due to inflammation caused by my rheumatoid arthritis (RA). 

If only my legs would stop throbbing and my elbows weren’t so swollen and stiff, I might be able to get back to sleep. I try to adjust my body twenty different ways as I attempt to fall asleep, but it’s no use. I am awake. 

It’s a night that is dominated by painsomnia, or being unable to sleep because of pain.

While many people think “old” when they think arthritis, millions of young women live with autoimmune forms of arthritis. 

The most common form, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is 2-3 times more likely to occur in women. 

RA is not a disease of older adults. Rather, most are diagnosed between the ages of 30 and 50, though RA can start at an earlier or later age. Therefore, RA affects women during their key childbearing years.

Living with rheumatoid arthritis and how to manage the disease with Tumbler and Tipsy fashion designer Michael Kuluva.

Amazingly, nearly everyone has a powerful computer in their pocket or purse. 

It’s so easy to pull out our smart phones to answer life’s most mundane, trivial, or complex questions. 

Unfortunately, it’s just as easy for a person diagnosed with a serious, chronic disease like autoimmune arthritis to read an unlimited amount of information about their illness, which can be overwhelming to those seeking answers and direction about disease management. 

Here are four strategies to help arthritis patients (or anyone living with a chronic disease) find credible and actionable information.

Rheumatoid arthritis can limit activity due to inflammation. Find out more about how to live with rheumatoid arthritis.

Each week, host Dr. Susanne Bennett shares her Nature's Secrets to a healthier body. This week, she discusses the tragic death of the Eagles' Glenn Frey

Over 20 million people have been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease. Might you be one of them and just not know it?

The truth about the low cost Low Dose Nalltrexone (LDN) treatment option.

As a Naturopathic Doctor and cardiologist I split my time between heart and everything else about 60/40, so when a 16 year old with rheumatoid arthritis was coming in I wasn't surprised.

However when she showed up, I found a fluid-bloated young girl in a wheel chair.

Turns out she was maxed on medication including steroids and a drug which has a side effect of lymphoma. The mother was overweight with poor skin, the father refused to come saying that the daughter was already seeing the finest physicians in the world at the Mayo Clinic.

I did a brief physical and had an explanation that because of her food and life habits, along with environmental toxicity, her body had become allergic to her joints. The family although reasonably wealthy, lived on processed (junk) foods. The mother stated that the other two children where obese, and that the father although thin, had a heart attack before the age of fifty.

I explained to the mom that they had a toxic and sick house, and that all the junk food needed to go. I arranged for one of my interns to take the family to Whole Foods, and the mother started to cry.