by Dr. Bill Rawls
Posted 4/29/22

There’s no doubt that treatment for chronic Lyme disease can really add up, especially if it takes months to years to feel better. But when you’re dealing with an uncomfortable symptom like joint pain, you need relief. So which herbs are the best choice when you have limited funds? Here, Dr. Bill Rawls discusses some herbal remedies to prioritize for joint health and pain, plus the preparations you can use to bring your costs down. Learn more about how to save money on Lyme disease treatment here.

Video Transcript

Question: What are the top herbs to get for joint pain with limited funds?

Tim Yarborough: Next one from Angela. If someone has limited funds, what are the top herbs? Like if you had to choose two or three or four or a combination there, what would you, what would you prioritize above everything else that you’ve recommended, Dr. Rawls, for joints?

Dr. Rawls: Probably turmeric. Turmeric is dirt cheap. You can get that anywhere. Boswellia isn’t that expensive either. But you definitely need some antimicrobial herbs. Probably top of the list for that would be cat’s claw and Japanese knotweed. Anything you add on is going to really help you.

Buy the best preparations that you can, either tinctures or standardized extracts. If you get really desperate, you can buy bags of standardized extracts of herbs and actually make your own capsules, which I did a good bit of when I was figuring this out because I found that there were a lot of things I couldn’t get. So I would order packs, pouches of standardized herbal extracts, and I had my own little capsule machine, and I’d make my own little capsules.

Then, you can do it pretty cheaply. It’s a lot of work, but yeah, it can save your money. So there are definitely things that you can do. There are definitely things that you should do. As many of these herbs as you can get in you, do.

Now, just a really quick note on buying herbs: There are really three main ways. There’s whole herb powder, which is basically the whole herb ground up, and you get a lot of fiber in that. And there are a few herbs that that’s the only way you can get. It’s like anamu; it takes about a thousand milligrams at least, because mostly it’s just whole herb, whole herb powder. So it’s the whole plant. The stems, leaves, everything dried and ground up.

Beyond that, are tinctures. Tinctures, they take the medicinal part of the plant, whether that’s root or stems or leaves and they soak that in water and alcohol, extract the phytochemistry, and then remove the stems and leaves. So you get just the phytochemicals. That’s a really nice way to do it. There’s certain things like cryptolepis and houttuynia, that it’s hard to find any other way. They just don’t do as well with other products, as some other products.

And then the final things are standardized powdered extracts. Basically, they’re taking a water alcohol tincture and drying off the water and alcohol to get the powder. And then, they mix that with some of the whole herb. So the ratio of phytochemicals to the powder is, you can get higher and higher concentrations. So you want to get as high of concentrations of the phytochemicals as you can. That’s the most concentrated way to get phytochemicals is the standardized powdered extracts.

Dr. Rawls is a physician who overcame Lyme disease through natural herbal therapy. You can learn more about Lyme disease in Dr. Rawls’ new best selling book, Unlocking Lyme.
You can also learn about Dr. Rawls’ personal journey in overcoming Lyme disease and fibromyalgia in his popular blog post, My Chronic Lyme Journey.