A month or so after taking CMO back in 1995. Dr. Len
Sands found relief from the terrible pain and
limitations of his arthritis and he wrote a brief
testimonial about his experience. After he was free of
virtually all pain for five years, he prepared this more
detailed "before and after" account. Here's the story of
his own experiences with arthritis and how his motives,
both personal and professional, propelled the San Diego
Center research associates to the discovery and
development of CMO. This is the compelling personal
account of the Director of the San Diego International
Immunological Center, Dr. Len Sands.
"Five years ago I was a closet cripple;
bone-on-bone in my knees. Then CMO turned my life
around."
Following several years of excruciating pain
from bone grinding against bone in my knees, I find it
hard to believe that I’m still 95%-100% pain free five
years after taking CMO. It's a miracle! Up until then, I
was what you might call a closet cripple, hiding that
severity of my osteoarthritis form just about everyone
but the Chief of our research staff. I never was a
complainer. I hid my pain. I pretended, as much as
possible, that I wasn't suffering every minute of my
waking day. The only time I was reasonably comfortable
was when I was planted in my bed or on the sofa watching
TV. Even then couldn't cross my legs. In fact, there
were only a couple of positions I could manage where my
knees wouldn't hurt, and then only if I shifted my legs
around frequently enough.
But that's the tip of the iceberg. I'm going to tell you
more, much more. I want you to understand why I had such
a personal interest in constantly prodding our research
associates into pursuing every conceivable avenue of
investigation regarding arthritis. I'm sure they thought
of me as some kind of possessed maniac. Remember that I
was trying to hide my pain from nearly everyone. But how
successfully can you hide it when you have to walk down
a flight of stairs backwards?
Whenever I assisted our MD's in our patient examination
and treatment rooms, I'd just scoot around like some
windup toy on one of those wheeled stools that doctors
always use. That way no one had to see my tortured walk.
But I couldn't get up without pushing myself up from the
seat with my arms. (The same was true for any chair or
seat.) Sometimes I'd just get stuck there on that stool
for quite a while. But most of the time I'd have a table
or a desk to use for additional support to push myself
up. Even so. getting up from anywhere meant I'd get
those stabbing pains in my knees. Once I was seated
somewhere, I tended to stay put for a long time, a very
long time. I was sure my butt was beginning to mold
itself into a chair seat shape.
Regardless, there I was, relentless about continuing
research. Whip in hand, I was ruthless about all there
sniveling complaints that they had already exhausted all
avenues of exploration. Mush, you huskies! For me, pain
was a great motivator and constant pain was an even
greater one so I couldn't have cared less about their
calling me Dr. Strangelove, or Robo-Doc.
Most people probably thought it weird that I'd move a
chair over to some object that I needed to pick up off
the floor. I couldn't easily bend down, of course. So
I'd sit on the chair and lean down sideways to pick
things up. maybe I wasn't so good at hiding my problem
after all.
My evenings weren't much better. I couldn't cross my
legs in bed either. If I chose to lie on my back, I'd
have to prop a pillow under my knees. When I slept, it
was always on my side with a baby pillow in between my
knees. I couldn't stand the weight of one knee upon the
other. Even with the cushion, several times a night I'd
be shocked into wakefulness by some jolt of pain. I
often wondered what our neighbors thought about those
late night screams.
Naturally as a medical professor, I was aware of mostly
everything in the world used to treat arthritis. And,
believe me, if I heard of it, I tried it. (except for
steroids and Methotrexate. I wasn't willing to
compromise my immune system and my liver.) It didn't
matter if it was herbal, homeopathic, acupuncture, or
gold shots, conventional medicine, or voodoo, I tried
it.
Yes, even voodoo. After several years of constant pain,
I even tried a couple of faith healers and a few very
reputable Mexican 'curanderos' as well. I was assaulted
by healing hands, dusted with magical powders, rubbed
with potent poultices, thrashed with leafy branches,
suffocated with smoky fumes, and stung by angry bees. I
wasn't about to rule anything out. But it didn't help a
bit.
I have a lot of respect for Oriental and Indian
medicines. So I was hopeful when, in 1994, our
researchers came up with some strange Ayurvedic medicine
from India that was really supposed to work. (A similar
or maybe the same product is now being sold in the U.S.
from Australia.) There were many anecdotal reports of
success, centuries of them. Lots of professional
documentation as well. I spent months faithfully
smearing my knees every night with some smelly Ayurvedic
gooey tar and wrapping them in flannel and plastic to
keep the goo from oozing out onto the bed. It oozed out
anyway, just like some kind of killer alien blob of
tar-like sulfured molasses, staining our sheets. What a
mess! And no success.
I was also taking the whole range of vitamins and
minerals, plus alfalfa, yucca, saw palmetto, juice
diets, raw food diets, fasting, gelatin, shark
cartilage, chicken cartilage, glucosamine, chondroitin
sulfate, all kinds of herbs alone and in combination.
Some were a help, but they could only dull the symptoms
a bit, and certainly could not keep with the rampant
destruction of the cartilage in my knees. I must say,
though, that I felt considerably more discomfort any day
that I didn't take my supplements. So I kept on with
them for the minimal benefits they brought, despite the
fact they were costing me a bundle.
Anti-inflammatory pills? Knowing how hard they are on
the liver, I only took what I needed to keep
functioning. I could usually get away with only one or
two strong (and very expensive) time-release pills on a
working day. I'd gulp one down just before brushing my
teeth in the morning. You see, for the most part I could
run the center sitting behind my desk. I hardly had to
move around at all, so that let me get through the day
fairly well. But often I'd need another potent pill
around mid afternoon. When the family would go to the
movies or anywhere else that required some walking, I'd
have to take a double dose (despite the medical warning
not to.) Even so, trying to negotiate a set of any more
than two stairs was a killer. So was the inclined aisle
you have to descend to get your movie seats. Going
downhill was much worse than climbing up. If you've got
arthritis in your knees, I'm sure you know what I mean.
I never shopped at the malls, too much walking. Just a
few yards of walking and I was in severe pain. I'd pick
stores where I could park near the door. And ones with
shopping carts were a must. They were very helpful to
lean on while walking or scanning merchandise. I found
that wheelchair ramps were easier to negotiate than
stairs.
Handrails were a blessing for pulling myself up and
bracing myself to go down the ramps or stairs. I'm sure
I looked like some kind of funny stiff-legged mechanical
bear trying to negotiate sets of even a few stairs.
Picking things up off the floor near a table or a desk
wasn't so bad Painful, yes. But at least I could do it
by supporting myself with one hand while carefully
bending down to pick up the object with the other hand -
all the while hoping my knees wouldn't collapse. You
know, you learn to cope.
Nevertheless, in my heart I knew that someday I'd reach
the point where I'd be facing a dreaded wheelchair
existence. I was already often using a cane and
sometimes crutches. Next would come the crutches full
time then the walker and finally the wheelchair. I hated
the thought of being so limited. Until I got arthritis I
was always quite active - tennis, swimming, scuba
diving, hiking, traveling, window-shopping, or just
strolling around here and there. It depressed me to have
given up those pleasures.
It depressed me even more to think of how much of a
burden I would become to my family.
In the beginning.
The arthritis process had begun years ago, of
course. It doesn't happen overnight. Though the terrible
worsening seemed to have come suddenly, it had been
building up for quite a sometime.
It all started with a vehicle accident that resulted in
a terrible jolt to my knees. (I'll confess. It was a 55
mph dump off a motorcycle.) No broken bones, but my body
was wracked with pain - especially my legs and back. I
was in bed for two days, on crutches for two weeks, and
using a cane for two months. Then it all went away, or
so I thought, for about three years. I was just fine for
three years. No sign of any trouble at all. But of
course, the arthritic process had already begun with the
big jolt. I didn't realize it then but, unnoticed, it
was slowly building up steam, and it would soon blow up.
Then, I felt the first signs of what was really
happening inside my body. A twinge of pain here, a bit
of weakness there. Nothing dramatic. Hardly noticeable.
Just a little hint of the misery to come.
Over the next three or four years the worsening was
gradual. The pain, though mild, became almost ever
present during my waking hours. Soon I developed a click
in my right knee that would sometimes give me quite a
shot of pain when it snapped.
Then came the era of codeine abuse...
I knew it was wrong, but I didn't know what else
to do. We had been planning this leisurely
round-the-world trip for years to celebrate a wedding
anniversary. I wasn't about to let my arthritis spoil
it.
Several years had passed since my accident and we were
living in Spain at the time. The click in my knee had
degenerated into a 'trick knee' that would sometimes
buckle quite unexpectedly. Anti-inflammatory and pain
medication, including codeine, were readily available
over the counter without prescription there. I used them
only on particularly active days. But good days were
coming far less frequently.
Then it was time for our trip, the dream vacation of a
lifetime - a full year of bumming around Asia, the
Pacific Islands, and the Middle East - no schedule. Our
bargain round-the-world tickets would let us linger
anywhere as long as we liked. We could make our
continuing flight reservations whenever we chose. Now,
how was I going to let my arthritis spoil a trip like
that?
I knew there would be plenty of walking for museums,
tours, sight-seeing and shopping. Then there would be
scuba diving, swimming, boating and beach bumming. A lot
of activity - just the way we loved it. All joyfully
accompanied by our vigorous eight-year-old son.
There was only one way I was going to make it through a
full year of that kind of activity: codeine. I gave no
thought to the consequences of the abuse my already
degenerating knees would suffer. Moreover, I wasn't
about to rob a moment of joy and adventure of this trip
from anyone, myself included. I’m not for a moment going
to pretend that I wasn't doing it for myself as well.
I didn’t have to stockpile a whole year's supply of
codeine. I knew it would be readily available in most of
the countries we planned to visit. And it was. I'd go in
and buy out the entire stock of two or three pharmacies
at a time. It wasn't that much; they only stock half a
dozen boxes each. (Or so they said.) Except for India;
there codeine was really cheap and I could get a couple
hundred tablets at just one pharmacy. I really stocked
up in India.
No, I didn't turn into a junkie. Never got addicted. On
boat cruise or lazy days for example, I didn't bother
taking codeine at all and I didn't need it for swimming
or diving either.
On museum, sight-seeing, or shopping days, though, I'd
really toss them down. And there were a lot of those
days. But there were very low dose pills. I'd take
several at a time-just about every four hours. Nobody
noticed. Everyone's used to my vitamin regimen - gulping
down nearly twenty pills with every meal. It was just
routine.
My non-codeine days let me know, though, what I was
doing to my knees. The tension, the stiffness, and the
discomfort made it clear. Masking the pain let me remain
active, but vigorous activity is not recommended for
arthritic joints. It only hastens the degeneration of
the already damaged and far more vulnerable cartilage.
And we prolonged it by extending our vacation far beyond
our original scheduled year. It was the best of times
for all of us, and the worst of times for my knees.
The mills of arthritis grind slowly...
Returning home, I assessed the damages. Now I
could relax and let my knees go without medication to
try to evaluate their condition. The extended time of
strenuous use during vacation had taken its toll. Stairs
were more difficult to climb, and getting up from a low
sofa was almost impossible.
I had no regrets about the trip. Even without the abuse,
my arthritis would have continued to worsen, and I
speculated that it had been my last chance ever to enjoy
an experience like that anyway. I knew where my ailment
would take me. I was eventually, destined to end up in a
wheel chair. Or at the very least I would need a
replacement surgery, which was not generally very
successful in those days. Despite my long experience as
the owner and director of a hospital as well as six
clinics, I've never been fond of surgery.
...and the grind exceeding small
After the vacation I was careful to treat my
knees gently, and despite the severe side effects of
that experience, further deterioration did not occur at
an abnormally fast rate. It was constantly evident,
slowly grinding away at my knees, but not extreme. Just
the usual relentless progression of an ordinary
osteoarthrits case. I'd decide to go back to work at
what I loved most: medical research. No strenuous
activity needed there.
My work as Director of the San Diego Clinic
Immunological Center has been the most rewarding I've
ever experienced. How could it possibly be otherwise at
a facility dedicated to the research and development of
products and treatments for ailments for which no
current therapy is yet known. And I took advantage of
that personally, relentlessly urging more and more
research on arthritis. True I had my own interest at
stake, but it wasn't hard to justify our efforts,
either, not with well over forty Americans suffering the
pain and crippling effects of rheumatoid osteoarthritis.
Then one day it happened. An obscure little three-page
article in a pharmaceutical journal was discovered by
our researchers. It described investigations made at the
US Government National Institutes of Health (NIH) about
25 years earlier. An injectable substance called
cetylmyristoleate seemed to possess both preventative
and curative properties for laboratory rats with induced
arthritis.
We had our doubts. It would surely seem that anything
that rally worked would have come to light a lot sooner
than 25 years on the other hand, knowing how government
agencies like NIH operate, finding that some important
discovery had been buried for a hundred years would not
be too surprising.
We decided to give it a try. As interested as I was in
treating my own problems, I was even more interested in
seeing if it had any benefits when administered orally.
After all, it would be far easier to make an oral
product available to millions who need it than make it
necessary for them to get prescriptions for an
injectable. So I tried taking the foul tasting oil
orally. The result: nothing spectacular, but I
definitely saw a bit of improvement; enough to encourage
us to develop a product that did work in a capsule form
for oral administration.
When I took the product that we had developed on our
own, which is called CMO, (cerasomal
cis-9-cetylmyristolate) it was like a miracle. I
experienced an improvement of about 80% in just a couple
of days. Upon repeating the CMO several days later, it
was almost like I'd never had arthritis at all. I
couldn't believe that my knees, which, had been devoid
of cartilage and grinding bone for about six years, were
now working painlessly and almost perfectly. I could
still feel a bit of clicking in my right knee as I
walked. And I would get a shot of pain if I twisted a
knee joint. but that was heaven compared to what I had
been suffering.
Stairs are still a problem for my right knee. Because of
the erosion of the bones over the years, they just don't
work quite right on the stairs. However, normal flat
walking is just fine, and inclined ramps are no longer a
problem. I've enjoyed five years now with no problems
and no need for further treatment or medication of any
kind. It has set me free sexually as well, an added
benefit from CMO™. Frankly, it has turned my whole life
around. I'm no longer a cripple!
It was such a joy, just being able to enjoy a pain-free
walk along the beach, or an extended walk through the
shopping mall again.
...Everybody noticed the difference right away.
My daughter lived more than halfway across the
country. She only go to see me once or twice a year,
sometimes less than that. So it was easy to see the
changes year by year. It was only a couple of years ago
that she reluctantly commented on my trouble walking.
But knowing how I hate pity, she never said much more
than, "Looks like your arthritis is getting really bad."
That was about five years ago. Then, a bit later (as I
was carrying her bags at the airport!) She looked at me
and squealed, "Dad, you really are cured. You used to
just barely hobble around before. I can't believe it.
You're walking even faster than I am."
I'm not saying that I can get out there and play
football again. But I can hold up to a fair game of fun
tennis where we're mostly just lobbing the ball back and
forth rather than trying to kill each other. And I still
do have a day or two a month as the weather changes that
I'm not completely comfortable - just a nagging, dull
little ache. (And, I'm happy to say, we've just
developed a CMO cream that takes care of those dull
aches, too.)
For the most part, though, I'm living a normal active
life that is free of the limitations and constant pain
that I suffered before we developed CMO. For a disease
that conventional pharmacology and medicine can offer
only despair, I along with thousands of others who have
benefited form CMO, call that a miracle. Try the CMO
capsuless and cream, I believe it will do the same for
you!
