If Your Knees Hurt, Try This
by David Stewart, Ph.D.

Seven years ago I had severe arthritis pain in my right knee for which a doctor recommended a knee replacement. I declined. (See Raindrop Messenger Archives, Vol 3, No 4, 2005, at .) Instead I used Wintergreen and Cypress Oil applied twice a day, morning and evening. I also applied PanAway from time to time. It took two months to heal and for the next five or six years there was no pain in that knee. I walked hundreds of miles, including climbing mountain paths and rugged terrain.

A year and a half ago a pain of a different kind came into that knee and the Wintergreen and Cypress did not work this time. Neither did the PanAway have any mitigating effect on the knee. I eventually realized that the source of the pain was not in the knee. It was a displaced pain from a pinched nerve at L5 in my lower spine, a form of sciatica. That is why the Wintergreen and Cypress oil applied directly to the knee did not work this time. The previous pain had been arthritis in the knee joint, but this time it was different and had a different root originating in the lumbar region of my spine.