I have some insight into Morton's neuroma which I would like to offer, as it may be helpful. I apologize for the length of this, but a short answer would not be able to address everything. Most, if not all, chronic pain (as well as other symptoms, such as allergies, asthma, etc, and other degenerative conditions) comes from inflammation which develops in the cells, when the cells do not have adequate nutrients to balance and quell oxidative damage (akin to metal rusting, or rubber hardening, or exhaust from a car engine) from the metabolizing of oxygen and other environmental influences, as cells were designed to do. This is why even the USDA and the AMA agree that supplementation is necessary for most if not all people, even with a good diet. The only longterm coping mechanism is adequate levels of nutrients; when your cells are healthy, you, by definition, are also healthy. The cells have the inherent ability to heal themselves, given adequate resources. This is why the Usana Health Sciences products, which we advertise on this site, can help, over time (just as with surgical incisions, the body needs time to repair tissue damage), problems such as neuromas; not because the products themselves heal (just as medications and surgery, also, do not heal the tissues, but rather they either mask the symptoms, or remove the symptomatic tissue - the problem is, that neither of these approaches stop the underlying causative process from continuing or recurring in similar other tissues in the body), but because the body, itself, is more able and equipped to heal (and to stay free from illness, as the cells become healthy). If I had (or had had, in the past) a Morton's neuroma, I would take the Usana Essentials, Active Calcium, and Biomega (fish oil) - all adults, particularly in the Boomer's age group or older, should be taking these, anyway just for normal health maintenance - and I would add the Proflavanol C100 (grape seed extract, a powerful natural antiinflammatory, combined with a proprietary vitamin C compound, since these two nutriients are synergistic with each other). There is a free 'Health Assessment' on our website which anyone can take to get a recommendation from the science department as to an individualized nutritional program.
The nutritional supplement industry is huge, and, amazingly, there is very little policing of the industry. Primarily, it is self-policed, as compared with the pharmaceutical industry, where the FDA imposes regulations on accuracy of what is contained in a given pill, and on whether the pill will break down in time to be absorbed into the bloodstream, so that it can be taken to the cells. For this reason, a small percentage of supplement manufacturers voluntarily adopt these 'Pharmaceutlcal-Grade' standards (and include this assurance on their label - if it is not there, the product is not Pharmaceutical-grade, since this level of manufacturing is an added cost and is a 'feather in the cap' of the manufacturer) in order to assure the customer that the product has in it what is claimed on the label, and will break down in time to be absorbed into the bloodstream. This is also why merely reading labels on nutritional products is not reliable, since the labels usually do not reflect what is truly the level of nutrients in the product (you would have to have the product analyzed, yourself, in order to truly know this), nor does it reflect the likelihood that the given product will disintegrate in time to be absorbed into the blood stream, for distribution to the cells; and if it does not, the product, along with any nutrients that might have been in it, passes on out of the body unused by the cells. Also, even if the product is pharmaceutical grade, that merely means that the labeling is adequate; not that the levels of nutrients in the products are up to the levels that research shows that we need. This is why quality of the science and manufacturing of a given product, which cannot be known by the reading the label, is so important; and is why I encourage you to learn about the
Comparative Guide to Nutritional Supplements and other third party verifiers that help with choosing a quality supplement. These sources are discussed on our website, above, and at
www.usana.com.
Just as when, years ago, an ailing knee which I had been told would require surgery normalized over time, and my adult-onset asthma, over a matter of months went away, something which I had had no idea was possible, and which was a lifechanging and career-changing epiphany for me; the body has ability to get and stay healthy if we do what is necessary. The underlying process of all of these chronic degenerative conditions is one root source; it is like a Medusa's head.
None of us can last forever, but we were meant to have good health, with a sudden decline at the end, not to slowly degenerate over the course of our lifetime. Dr. Wentz, a renowned microbiologist who is Usana's founder, said (I think he quoted this from a previous scientist) that "we live too short, and we die too long." A big reason for this is that the modern world has added environmental stresses on the cells that they were not 'built' to handle, uping the levels of nutrients needed to compensate. This is why the research worldwide is showing that the 'RDA' levels of nutrients, which even as originally set in the 1930s and 1940s, primarily driven by wartime necessities, were only a minimalist level of nutrients to protect against shortterm nutrient deficiency diseases such as rickets and scurvy, are inadequate to provide optimal health in today's world.
