Transcription
Where are the joints and where is the bile? How can they possibly be connected? Different doctors treat these parts of the body. Neurologists and orthopedists are not interested in your bile, and a gastroenterologist will hardly ask about your joints. So, apparently, you won't learn about this connection in any way, except perhaps by watching this video. Watch until the end and find out which two substances reduce joint pain, although they are currently used for completely different diseases. And how, most importantly, to trigger their natural production in your body.
As early as the 19th century, doctors described a strange peculiarity of some of their patients. People with rheumatism, with joint pain. After an attack of jaundice, these very joints suddenly stopped hurting. After some time, the arthritis, of course, returned, but for some reason, jaundice eased its course each time and relieved inflammation in the joints. Despite the fact that the fact was known for a very long time, it, you know, was kept on the shelf of curious medical facts, which are unclear how to apply and where to fit.
Jaundice is the yellowing of the skin and eyes in patients with liver damage. It can occur due to hepatitis, cirrhosis, liver fibrosis, or blockage of the bile ducts. Obviously, causing liver damage to relieve joint pain is not an option, an unhealthy idea. In the 1940s, researcher Philip Hench latched onto this strange fact and began injecting bile components to patients with arthritis. This caused temporary relief of inflammation in the joints, and people felt better. He tried to figure out exactly which component caused such a reduction in inflammation.
And then it turned out that pregnant women also experience remission of rheumatoid arthritis during pregnancy for some reason. And in the end, he decided that the culprit was most likely increased cortisol in the blood. It increases with liver damage because the liver usually breaks down this hormone and removes it from the body, but here it simply cannot do it because it is inflamed. As a result, Hench isolated one of the corticosteroid hormones, and the first corticosteroids were made based on it. His discovery earned him the Nobel Prize because, in fact, he discovered the most powerful anti-inflammatory drug to date.
Currently, the most well-known drug in this class is prednisone. It saves people from inflammatory shock and is essentially the only remedy for severe autoimmune diseases. But there is always a "but," and in the case of prednisone, the "but" should be this big. Cortisol is involved in everything, in all types of metabolism. And the use of things like prednisone affects all aspects of the body's functioning, which means it carries many side effects. This was a high price for a life without inflammation, sometimes too high, when the euphoria from the discovery of prednisone and the use of such drugs everywhere possible, just a little passed and subsided. When the consequences of the therapy were realized, it became clear that a replacement had to be found.
It must be said that despite all the lives saved by prednisone, its discovery slowed down the study of the nature of many diseases, especially autoimmune ones, including rheumatoid arthritis. They simply started putting a universal patch, prednisone, on autoimmune diseases, and that was it. And then, many years later, the answer to the question of how to stop inflammation in the joints was sought again from bile.
Bile, a fluid used in medicine since the time of Aristotle and Galen, presented a new source of problem-solving with the advent of new research methods. We are used to thinking that bile is something bitter that aids digestion. And that's it. And indeed, it helps digest fats, but it also removes many harmful components from the liver and participates in the removal of cholesterol from the blood. It also affects fat metabolism. But that's not all. It turns out that bile can act like a hormone. Its individual components, in very small quantities, can affect tissues and organs located very far away from the gallbladder, the liver, and the digestive system in general.
And in 2025, a study was published in the journal Science that finally linked bile and joint pain. Bile is a multi-component substance, and some of its components are bile acids. There is a whole set of them, many of them. In large quantities, bile acids can be quite toxic and can damage the liver. Therefore, they are excreted through bile, expelled from the liver. It is in them, in bile acids, that cholesterol can be converted and thus leave the body, be excreted. Bile acids, one might say, disinfect the small intestine and prevent bacteria from multiplying there. They protect us from intestinal inflammation and from small intestinal bacterial overgrowth. I, by the way, talked about this in a video about SIBO.
With bile acids, the intestinal lining produces substances that inhibit inflammation in the intestine. Without them, the lining becomes inflamed. That is, if the bile duct is ligated, preventing bile from being released, as is done in animals, for example, the intestine begins to become inflamed. But our body, you know, is stingy, thrifty. It doesn't like to just throw away useful substances. And quite a lot of bile acids are reabsorbed into the intestines and return to the liver through the blood. And while they travel through the blood, along with it, with this blood, they reach various areas of the body and act there as hormones.
Receptors for bile acids, which react to them and cause the cell to perform one command or another, have been found in adipose tissue, liver, gallbladder, immune cells, muscles, brain, bones, and cartilage. And one type of these acids can reduce inflammation in the joints. And this is a derivative of probably the only bile acid that many people know. It is a derivative of ursan, ursodeoxycholic acid.
It turned out that people with joint pain, if they took ursosan under the prescription of a gastroenterologist, are much less likely to need joint replacement later. Ursosan protects their joints. This acid inhibits bone and joint wear, activates cartilage renewal, and improves bone condition. It reduces inflammation in the bone and switches our immune cells from an inflammatory mode to an anti-inflammatory mode.
In humans, ursosan, ursodeoxycholic acid, is not produced in our own cells, but this acid is made for us by the microbiome in the large intestine from our bile acids, albeit in very small quantities. So, people with inflammatory joint diseases have significantly fewer bacteria in their stool that produce our internal ursosan. This means they simply have no way to suppress inflammation in their joints through this mechanism.
So, how does this scheme work? Bacteria convert our bile acids into the necessary ursodeoxycholic acid, ursosan. It binds to a receptor and inhibits inflammation in the joint. It also increases the production of another hormone, GLP1. I talked about it in a video about Ozempic because it is our internal natural analogue of Ozempic. That is, this substance reduces appetite, improves sugar uptake from the blood, reduces tissue insulin resistance, changes fat metabolism, and leads to weight loss. It must be said that people on Ozempic also experience reduced inflammation in their bodies.
I want to remind you that there is no advertising of medications or supplements on my channel. And what I am talking about are natural products of our body, which, as it happens, are also used in tablet form. We are discussing the effects of certain substances and research results here, and how you can apply this knowledge in your real life to become healthier. If this approach resonates with you, and advertisements for supplements make your eye twitch and your face cramp, subscribe. My face cramps too. We'll stick together.
The Science article is in the description of this video, be sure to read it. In general, this research is very recent, from this year, which means that time will pass between it and the prescription of new drugs for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. This is not a quick bureaucracy, you know. But it is not excluded that in the next 5 years, besides the great and terrible prednisone, some other solution for joint pain will finally appear. And it will likely consist of two drugs that are already available and used for other diseases: ursosan and Ozempic. This means there is hope for such therapy relatively quickly, because new drugs will not have to be tested.
It seems like where are the joints and where is a drug for gallstones and a popular remedy for obesity. But such a metabolic gambit has turned out. But while such therapy is not yet available, let's see what a person does every day to ensure that this anti-inflammatory scheme for their joints either works and, consequently, the joints hurt less, or, conversely, the whole system stalls, and we get nothing, not even anti-inflammatory bile.
And the first point necessary for all this to work is normal bile flow. If bile constantly flows out normally with every meal, bile acids regularly circulate in the blood, which means the joints also receive a little anti-inflammatory components, and not only them. There is a separate video and a whole playlist about the gallbladder on how to improve bile flow. Here, I think, it is one of the most underestimated organs in humans. Watch these videos, and you will surely discover the key to solving a whole bunch of your pressing, long-standing problems. And here is the solution.
The second point is a normal microbiome. It is precisely it that converts our bile components into the necessary acid. It dissolves gallstones slowly and treats joints. Simply beautiful. To support the microbiome, we can, firstly, move regularly. Aerobic exercise improves the microbiome. This is proven by research. Secondly, it is very important not to take antimicrobial drugs, i.e., antibiotics, unnecessarily, and not to use antiseptics in everyday life without necessity.
The next thing you can do for your microbiome is not to drink alcohol and reduce the amount of ultra-processed foods in your diet. I talked about them here. Perhaps in the future, there will be special probiotics that will help relieve joint pain with these very bacteria. But, in principle, we are moving towards this, but there are no such probiotics yet.
Next point. Bile acids must be reabsorbed into the blood so that they reach the joints. This can be hindered, and it can sometimes be beneficial, for example, if cholesterol needs to be lowered. Then drugs like cholestyramine are prescribed, which bind bile acids, and they cannot return to the liver. But in the case of painful joints and no cholesterol problems, their return is theoretically beneficial for us because they have an anti-inflammatory effect. This means you don't need to consume large amounts of flavonoids and phytosterols, i.e., plant components with oils. Especially a lot of phytosterols are found in sea buckthorn oil, corn oil, and sesame oil. And, of course, in supplements with phytosterols that claim to lower your cholesterol. But their benefit in this regard, as always, is not proven. And it's always possible to harm. It's easy to do wrong.
Sorbents can also worsen the absorption of bile acids if taken unnecessarily. That is, if you are not poisoned, you do not need sorbents; they will steal some of your anti-inflammatory bile and not only that.
And finally, that very GLP1, the internal analogue of Ozempic. How exactly to make this useful substance be released naturally is difficult to say. Currently, it is assumed that it is released in response to a mixture of food, especially food rich in fiber, unsaturated fats like fish, and light protein. This means vegetables, fish, poultry, vegetable oils, in short, the Mediterranean diet, which, incidentally, is also considered the most anti-inflammatory of all. So it might well help you. And there is also a video here on how to reduce inflammation in the body in general.
And if you have already been prescribed Ursosan, and even Ozempic in addition, pay attention to how it affects joint pain. Tell your doctors about your observations, if, of course, you see any positive effects. Your observations sometimes accelerate the development of new treatment methods. Patients are unlikely to even think about this role of theirs.
Sometimes the connection between two very distant organs is not obvious. Doctors often specialize in their specific organ or system and treat only that. But everything is connected by common blood, common hormones, common nerves. And it is important to remember this connection, to keep it in mind. This is how sometimes you fix problems with your bile, and bam, your joints start to hurt less. The better you know yourself, the better you understand how your body works, the better you can help it and, importantly, not hinder it. And my channel is created precisely for this purpose: to guide you, to educate you a little, so that you become healthier and happier. Subscribe, give a like if you enjoyed this video, forward it to your relatives and friends. Knowledge should spread. Be healthier and see you in the next videos.