If you stick the phrase “apple cider vinegar” into a search engine on the internet, you’d be forgiven for thinking that you had come across a secret cult where the elixir of life was being discussed by religious fanatics. This may be the 21st century for modern pharmaceutical companies, but these true believers write passionately about how apple cider vinegar (ACV to those in the know) has helped with everything from rheumatism, arthritis and weight loss to relieving fatigue, headaches, diarrhoea and insomnia. The testimonies claim to hark back to 400BC, when Hippocrates was swigging the stuff.
And advocates even have a modern-day messiah in America’s Patricia Bragg, who has written books on the subject, and is owner of her own branded version of the drink. Dr Bragg claims that the minerals contained in apple cider vinegar — such as potassium, phosphorus, calcium, magnesium, natural silicon, pectin, and tartaric acids — are “important in fighting body toxins, inhibiting unfriendly bacteria . . . and helping the body to maintain its vital acidalkaline balance”.
The claims are almost too good to be true for a product that, when a couple of teaspoons are mixed with water, causes you to suck your teeth and shake your head from the tartness at the first sip. And yet, mix it with a little honey and the more you sip, the more appealing it becomes. Just by drinking a daily dose while researching this article over the past six weeks I have lost half a stone, and I have no idea why.
Apple cider vinegar seems to have a particular following among older people, especially those suffering from rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, both of which can cause excruciating pain. According to the Arthritis Research Campaign, more than seven million people in the UK have long-term health problems due to arthritis or a related condition, of which the over-65s are most affected.
Jackie Wright, 82, who lives in Cheshire, discovered apple cider vinegar after having both her hips replaced at the relatively young age of 45. When threatened with yet another operation to help her arthritis, a neighbour lent her a book called Folk Medicine: Natural Remedies for Everyday Ills by D. C. Jarvis.
“I could no longer open bottles with my hands, but I couldn’t bear to go back into hospital for yet more surgery,” says Wright. She asked the doctor to put the operation on hold, and followed the suggested dose in the book, taking two teaspoons of apple cider vinegar and two teaspoons of runny honey in water every day. After 12 months her fingers began to loosen up. “I don’t get any pain any more,” says Wright, who has continued with the remedy for 37 years. “I can now use my fingers to take the lids off jars with no problem whatsoever.”
Leone Cockburn, 64, from East Lothian, discovered the ready-mixed apple cider vinegar product Honegar when casting around for a cure for swollen joints in her fingers, caused, she believes, by holding an artist’s paintbrush while working in her studio. Cockburn found the remedy helped within weeks. “It certainly becomes worse when I am not taking it,” she says. “I take a slug in a tumbler in the morning, neat or with half an inch of cold water, for a lovely cleansing drink.”
However, the medical profession does not embrace this “miracle cure” and, wherever it is mentioned, often in relation to arthritis, journals are quick to say that there are no studies to prove that it works. Words such as “fad” and “cultish” are bandied. And a study in the Journal of the American Dietetic Association last year warned that some ACV pills don’t even seem to contain any of the ingredient.
The Arthritis Research Campaign has invested money into researching two alternative therapies, magnetic bracelets and acupuncture, but says of apple cider vinegar: “We would like to see it scientifically tested. We don’t have a closed mind but we are a medical research council and there are so many anecdotal claims made for remedies that are often just offering the placebo effect. For example, some people swear by gin and prunes.” Jane Tadman at the campaign describes sufferers as “sitting ducks for manufacturers of all products”.
Times nutritionist Jane Clarke, who runs a practice in London, sees many patients taking the remedy. “I don’t understand why the biochemistry works in the body, but it does seem to for some people.” Clarke would never prescribe it, preferring “to achieve results nutritionally”, but has seen patients who are taking it for gastric problems, irritable bowel syndrome and rheumatism. Her belief, shared by leading rheumatologist Professor Paul Dieppe of Bristol University, is that it works in the mind. “It’s one of those wonderful remedies where there’s a huge placebo effect,” says Clarke. “I don’t believe that the body becomes too acidic or alkaline, that’s more traditional Indian thinking.”
For every naysayer in the medical profession, there are equal numbers of apple cider vinegar evangelists still spreading the word. Evelyn Williams, 79, who lives in Kimmel Bay, Wales, goes so far as to describe apple cider vinegar and honey as “two of my three gods, along with garlic”. So fervent is her belief that she recently cleaned a leg wound with the stuff after falling badly outside a supermarket. “I’ve taken it for 40 years, and I’ve had no rheumatism whatsoever,” she says. Like me, she lost “around a stone or so”, initially, by taking a couple of teaspoons before each meal.
Which reminds me. I must take my tipple. Medical studies aside, I like myself half a stone thinner.
Arthritis Research Campaign can be contacted on 0870 8505000, or visit www.arc.org.uk
Conquering pain
“Lazy” is how explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes describes all those who have refused his help with their arthritis over the years. “I don’t understand why people will suffer and not bother doing something about it.”
His personal cure, is a product called Honegar, a mixture of apple cider vinegar and honey, which he has been taking for 22 years to relieve his aching joints. Few can claim to have such an extreme lifestyle as this 62-year-old, who ran seven marathons in seven days on seven different continents in 2003, just months after having a double heart by-pass operation. But Sir Ranulph is not offering himself up as an unusual case, but as someone who has found something that works for his arthritis and stuck to it. With the same determination, no doubt, that made him the first man to visit both the North and South poles.
Sir Ranulph came to Honegar via his mother, who developed arthritis at 82. “Desperate” to alleviate the pain, she took the advice of a nurse who advocated honey and cider vinegar. “It took between eight to twelve months but the daily dose worked,” he says. His own complaint had dogged him since his army days in the 1970s, when sleeping rough in the jungle and canoeing made his fingers and hips sore. After three months of taking two tablespoons of Honegar in boiling water, Sir Ran found himself pain-free. He is certain that it was the Honegar because when “I stopped taking it, the pain returned”. He takes it on all his expeditions. He has tried making his own concotion with honey and apple cider vinegar once, but “it didn’t seem to work”.
Honegar (£3.75 for 500ml, £6.95 for a litre bottle) and unprocessed apple cider vinegar can be bought from Holland & Barratt www.hollandandbarratt.com/ and other good health food stores.
Further reading, Folk Medicine: Natural Remedies for Everyday Ills by D.C. Jarvis (Pan, £5.99); Natural Healing with Cider Vinegar, by Margot Hellmiss (Sterling, £41.75), both available on www.amazon.co.uk
