MSM can help with degenerative arthritis, etc

James Coburn has played some of the toughest guys in cinema. But when rheumatoid arthritis struck him down at the height of his acting career, he got tough for real.

Coburn spent the next 20 years struggling with the crippling pain as he methodically worked his way through a series of alternative and complementary treatments. During this time the pain never stopped. Not until Coburn's doctor told him about MSM, or methyl-sulfonyl-methane, a simple sulfur compound. Within three days of taking MSM, Coburn's arthritis pain was gone. Gone for the first time in 20 years.

In an interview recently, the rangy Coburn talked about his personal odyssey of healing and about the miracle of MSM. Clad in black jeans, black turtleneck; Coburn talked about how it all started back in 1978.

He was 55, in the middle of an illustrious acting career, and was going through a bitter divorce. And he wasn't handling it well. "I had this negative emotion stirring inside me that I wouldn't admit was there. I was angry about it, but I was saying: "Let it go; I don't care", he recalled as he stretched out his legs in the living room of his manager, Hilli Elkins. "It just started turning me to stone. That's what I think really tripped the arthritis."

Coburn is of Scot-Irish extraction, a genetic type that is uniquely predisposed to getting arthritis. His father had it, and Coburn had a touch of it in his wrist. But nothing had prepared him for the torment of full-blown disease. "I couldn't stand up." It caused me such agony and pain that I never wanted to get up. I'd break out in a sweat every time I stood up.

Arthritis Stopped Career Dead

Coburn had been an avid golfer and tennis player. Arthritis shut him down. He couldn't work at all for almost a year. "An actor's got to be able to move, and I couldn't. I was in pain every time I moved."

Coburn saw a doctor who diagnosed him with rheumatoid arthritis, and gave him some pills. "I asked him what caused it, and he said: "We don't know. You'll just have to live with it."

That wasn't good enough for Coburn. "I wanted to get to the root of it, and get rid of it, not just treat the symptoms." The doctor had given Coburn steroid anti-inflammatory pills. "They didn't do anything," he says. They did numb things for a while, that was it. It didn't work. I went to see him one more time and that was it.

For 15 days straight, Coburn went on a fast and did colonics every day to clean out his body. Then he broke his fast with what he thought would be the perfect food; an all-organic salad loaded with nuts, avocados, and different kinds of lettuce. He broke into hives immediately. "My skin was itching like crazy. I was allergic to everything in that salad.

Tests revealed Coburn was allergic to 47 of the 75 food chemicals tested. So he embarked on a rigorous 90-day diet. He got a little better, and his pain decreased. But the arthritis was taking its toll. "I was freezing up." Coburn says. An actor friend of mine, R.G. Armstrong, came over and gave me a two and a half hour deep-tissue massage every day for two months. He probably saved my life. He kept all that stuff moving in there." But nothing could save his career.

"Having rheumatoid arthritis stopped my career. It would have stopped it completely if it hadn't been for Liz Donnelly at Special Artists. She kept giving me voice-over jobs. Arthritis didn't effect my voice, so I did narrations, commercials, and stuff like that. It helped, because if you can't work, you can't make any money. Occasionally I would make films, but I would do short things that I could handle physically. I was sick most of the time; however, they put a lot of makeup on so I didn't look so pale."

Years of Searching

Over the next 20 years, Coburn traveled widely, trying different healing modalities. "I tried everything from hands on healing to acupuncture. I ran into a lot of great people-healers of every description. It was a slow process and in the meantime my cartilage was being eaten away."

He could never get away from the pain. "If I leaned back like this;" he says, leaning against the couch, "my leg would start to hurt." This went on for almost 20 years, to a greater or lesser degree. Arthritis is an insidious disease. It takes calcium out of your bones and puts it in your muscles. Then it turns into a triangular shaped crystal with sharp points, this is what causes the pain. In the beginning, the pain was really strong. As I made changes in my lifestyle, it slowly, very slowly began to diminish."

Eventually, he found a man named Evans Rapsomanikis who had invented an electromagnetic treatment with some extraordinary healing capabilities. The Federal Government for using this machine, however, arrested Rapsomanikis. "He's had extraordinary success with all kinds of things, from AIDS to multiple sclerosis," says Coburn. "So the FDA and the AMA had him kicked out of the country. Now he has a place over in England, and everybody wants to get hold of his machine because it really works.

Coburn says the machine boosts the immune system, creating a shield against many illnesses. For six months, he went regularly for treatments at which time electrodes were placed all over his body and he would lie quietly and be electrocuted at a low level. "The more you could take, the better. I really think that's what stopped the progression of the arthritis. But it didn't stop the pain."

MSM Worked Better Than Anything

He kept searching, and finally found a doctor he felt he could trust. Dr. Ronald Lawrence who practices in Agoura, California. "He is the only guy I know of who I can depend on because he practices a different kind of health care. If he can deal with it in homeopathic ways or with acupuncture, he will. He tries to stay away from stuff that becomes addictive or is just passive. He's great!"

Lawrence tried a number of different therapies on Coburn with varying degrees of effectiveness. But nothing took until he tried the MSM. Lawrence had read about its remarkable properties and asked Coburn if he would like to give it a try. Coburn was game. "I took a teaspoon and a half of the crystals twice a day, once in the morning, and again in the evening. And three days later, no more pain. I could move."

Coburn has become a great fan of MSM and gives a lot of it to his friends. Actor Robert Vaughn was in town shooting a film and called Coburn for help. He had just come down with arthritis and couldn't raise his hands over his head. "I can't even comb my hair," he told Coburn. "Man, I've got the thing for you, come on over."

Vaughn went away with the MSM and twelve days later he was back, excitedly demonstrating his ability to comb his hair and wave his arms above his head. "I give MSM to everybody for many different reasons, just to see if it works, because it seems to have an efficacy for a lot to things," says Coburn. "My hair grows like crazy, the same with my fingernails. Thank God for it."

Career in Renaissance

Now that Coburn is pain-free, a whole new world of acting possibilities is opening up to him, and his career ha undergone a renaissance. He recently completed a film called Affliction, written by Paul Schrader from a book by Russell Banks. According to Movieline, "James Coburn gives a performance of frightening intensity."

"I have a great role in that I play Nick Nolte's abusive father," Coburn says with relish. "A drunk, a real alcoholic bastard. Just nasty. Trying to get his kids to be men." For a second, Coburn goes into character, and a slash of venom explodes form his eyes as he spits out the word "men."

Coburn will be eternally grateful for MSM. "MSM has contributed to the way I feel today. I feel really good. I worked 18 hours yesterday on set and I was in every shoot. In every shot, every scene! I sat down to eat lunch; that was it."

A deeply spiritual man, Coburn has spent his life exploring metaphysics and various disciplines-Zen, Sufism, Buddhism, Yoga, and the writings of G.I. Gurdjieff and Peter Ouspensky, to name a few.

"Gurdjieff says negative emotion rules the world," Coburn explains, "I've been reading his work for 40 years, and he give you a whole way of looking at life. He says you can't do anything if you're asleep. You have to wake up, and the way you wake up is by observing yourself. The hard thing to do is to remember to observe yourself."

"You use life. Life is what you're working against. The bigger the challenge, the more you succeed in your work, if you pay attention. The work: it's called. And the work is to be attentive to direct your attention towards one thing at a time, and give it your full attention. If we taught this work in schools, we'd all be really up there in consciousness. Instead of teaching kids by rote, teach them how to pay attention."

Negative Emotion the Culprit

But getting rid of negative emotion is key, says Coburn. "Take MSM and do a lot of breathing, and stay away from negative emotion. Observe that particular aspect of yourself, and don't allow that depression or negative emotion to enter in. If it does, get it out of the way, any way possible." And how did Coburn get rid of that negative emotion?

"I didn't get it out!" he exclaims. "That is the whole point! I got arthritis to get it out! So don't let in there, baby. I'm still trying to decrystalize my body, and MSM is the thing that has taken the pain away so that now I can actually do something about it."

"I've been through it. If you don't try, you're going to die. It takes a lot of time and a lot of attention and great desire to do it. And it's more fun that way."

Coburn chuckles appreciatively as he talks about Paula, his wife of five years. Cervical cancer runs in her family, so she is an avid researcher and collector of information on alternative and complementary therapeutic modalities. "Thank God for my wife, because she's always writing down names of books; she's always cutting thing out and putting them into a stack. She's got files on everything!"

A Daily Struggle

Coburn still must struggle daily with the legacy of years of pain. Holding up his mangled hands, he says; "I'm still bent with the remnants of it, because of the bowed tendons, which I'm slowly working out, but that takes a long time." He demonstrates, grimacing and contracting his neck, shoulder, and arm muscles. "Consequently, because you can't do anything, you can't do anything. You try, but it's too painful. And eventually the muscles become frozen in the grimace of pain."

Coburn has bowed tendons in his hands and arms, and works on them daily with gentle stretching. "I'm in the process of trying to straighten them out a little bit every day."

Stay Positive

Coburn is very clear about how important it is to stay positive. "If anything negative comes in, I say; Out! Gone! My life is good. I'm living in a positive emotional state."

Coburn practices a kind of moving meditation. "I try to direct my attention towards the moment, all the time. That's my meditation, staying awake. Observing my activities. And it becomes a meditation in itself."

"Then there are prayers that I say, and it's all dedicated to how can I serve. What am I doing to help out? Rather than trying to get something, it's about how best to serve. So that's what I do."

This article was taken from the Journal Of Longevity Magazine.

Written by James Privitera, M.D., D.C.

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