Beating bursitis
Q: My doctor is recommending cortisone shots for my bursitis. Is there anything natural I can try first?
Dr. Wright: Routine treatments for bursitis include everything from aspirin and other NSAIDs to potentially more dangerous COX-2 inhibitor drugs like now withdrawn Vioxx and Celebrex, and onward to injections of the “space alien” varieties of cortisone. But these are just temporary treatments that don’t get at the root of the problem–not to mention the fact that they all come with a long list of potential side effects.
But over the past 33 years, I have recommended an entirely different treatment for bursitis sufferers–one that’s completely natural, with no side effects.
And even though my patients have all had different complaints and varying degrees of pain, I gave them all the same advice for treatment.
Nearly 50 years ago, Dr. Irving S. Klemes discovered that the best treatment for bursitis pain is vitamin B12. Nothing has come close to it since then. When Dr. Klemes treated 40 individuals with acute subdeltoid bursitis with vitamin B12 shots, he found that they almost all experienced rapid pain relief–in some cases starting in just a few hours–and that complete relief was often achieved within a few days. All but three individuals were completely pain free within two to three weeks.
Dr. Klemes recommended that vitamin B12 (1cc, 1,000 micrograms) be given by injection every day for a week, then tapered to three times weekly, then to twice weekly, and then to once weekly until the pain was completely gone. Early on, I asked bursitis sufferers to follow these instructions exactly. Later, I discovered that taking 2 ccs of vitamin B12 every day until the pain went away, with no tapering, worked even better.
Hundreds of my patients have made complete recoveries within two weeks with no other treatment. In 33 years, I’ve seen vitamin B12 fail to relieve bursitis pain only once. In all other cases, even with the worst pain and swelling, vitamin B12 injections have always taken care of the problem.
