What are the Best Home Remedies for Arthritis Treatment?

Arthritis causes pain in specific joints of the human body because those joints lack the protective layer of cartilage. Home remedies act as a treatment for arthritis program that lets you reduce your symptoms at home. When you use one of these treatment arthritis remedies, you no longer need to visit a doctor regularly or purchase any expensive products. The best treatment arthritis remedies include ways to reduce any stiffness, pain or swelling that you experience because of arthritis.

Heat is one of the top home remedies for arthritis, especially for those who experience problems with joint stiffness. This stiffness worsens after periods of rest, including when you sleep at night. If you notice any signs of stiffness early in the morning, take a hot shower. The heat and steam from the water work as a treatment for arthritis. The heat slowly loosens the joints, reducing the stiffness that you feel. A heating pad can also help reduce stiffness associated with exercising. Place the heating pad on the stiff joint for up to 20 minutes before exercising. You can also use a sauna or hot tub as arthritis pain relief prior to working out.

Cold packs are another home remedy for arthritis pain. Ice packs act as treatment arthritis home remedy in two ways. The ice pack acts as a numbing agent that reduces any pain you feel because of arthritis. The ice pack also reduces swelling or inflammation caused by arthritis. When using this type of arthritis treatment, make sure that you use one specifically designed for medical use. If you cannot find an ice pack of this type, pour ordinary ice in a plastic bag. Wrap a dishcloth or towel around the ice pack before setting in on your skin. Ice packs can alleviate pain and swelling after exercising or any other activity. This type of arthritis treatment helps people of all ages.

Treatment of arthritis also include joint pain supplements. One of them used by many is a pain relieving ointment. You rub the arthritis treatment ointment into the skin on top of the affected joint. Most products of this type start working within a few minutes. You can also find a treatment arthritis spray that eliminates the need for touching the product with your hands. The sprays and ointments are readily available from most drugstores and stores that sell health care products.

How Can Arthritis be Treated Without Surgery?

Arthritis surgery isn't the only answer for those dealing with the problem, and a number of other options are out there.

With more than 46 million people suffering from arthritis in America alone, it's surprising that better solutions for the problem aren't available. But the fact is that most doctors can do little to help arthritis suffers beyond prescribing them painkillers or recommending that they use over the counter pain relievers. In severe cases, surgery may even be used to help provide relief. But this is expensive and comes with serious risks. That's why it's always a last resort. Those suffering from arthritis may end up feeling like they have no other choice, but taking control of your problem as early as possible may help. There are some nonsurgical treatments for arthritis pain relief that are worth looking into.

If you're looking for options to manage your arthritis without having to go through surgery, there are numerous choices. Things like dietary changes, acupuncture, and natural creams are all helpful, but the best choice is certainly to use natural supplements to combat arthritis.

Natural supplements work by delivering several different compounds to your body that it needs to promote good joint health. As you age, the cartilage in your joints deteriorates. The ligaments and tendons also weaken over a lifetime of use. While the body can heal the wear and tear up to a point, eventually the production of certain compounds slows down. Things like chondroitin and glucosamine are needed for healthy joints, but when your body slows production it could lead to weaker, tendon damage, and arthritis.

When you use joint pain supplements, you give your body a dosage of the compounds it needs to build stronger cartilage and healthy joints. In short, you give it the kind of help it needs to avoid the progression of arthritis. While there's some research indicating that the supplements could help reverse the effects of arthritis, more data is needed to know for sure. But most experts agree that these supplements can certainly slow or stop the deterioration of your cartilage and provide you with relief from your arthritis pain.

The earlier you start using supplements, the better since, the sooner you start, the better chance you'll have of stopping the development of the disease. But no matter when you start, these supplements can help you combat arthritis and may help you avoid the need to have surgery for your problem.

Weather may truly affect arthritis pain

Arthritis (DElight, E+ Photography via Getty Images)

BY - Shereen Jegtvig
@Reuters

For people with osteoarthritis of the hip, pain levels tracked with the weather over the course of a small two-year study, Dutch researchers say.

They looked at reported pain levels in a previous study of arthritis, then went back to weather records to document the conditions each day.

It turns out the participants' aches were just a little worse and joints just a little stiffer when humidity and barometric pressure levels rose.

"This is something that patients talk about all the time," Dr. Patience White told Reuters Health. A rheumatologist and vice president for Public Health Policy and Advocacy for the Arthritis Foundation, she was not involved in the study.

Osteoarthritis affects about 27 million Americans. Common risk factors include getting older, being obese, having previous joint injuries, overuse, weak muscles and genetics.

White said she often sees patients who say they are sensitive to the weather.

"Nobody's bedridden by the weather change," she said, "It's not severe pain, they just ache more."

More than 60 percent of patients with osteoarthritis say that weather conditions, such as rain, barometric pressure and temperature have an impact on their pain and stiffness, according to the study team, which was led by Desirée Dorleijn, of Erasmus MC University Medical Center Rotterdam.

Past research attempting to investigate the weather connection had yielded inconsistent results, so Dorleijn and her colleagues looked at self-reported hip pain and function in 222 osteoarthritis patients who participated in a glucosamine sulphate study.

The patients enrolled in the study filled out questionnaires every three months for two years, including the Western Ontario and McMasters University Osteoarthritis Index (WOMAC), which is scale for self-assessment of pain and function. The WOMAC scores range from 0 to 100, with 0 indicating no pain.

The researchers gathered weather reports for the days the patients filled out the questionnaires. The information gathered from the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute included average temperature, wind speed, hours of sunlight, rainfall, humidity and barometric pressure.

Patients who underwent surgeries for their arthritis were dropped during the study; so 188 participants completed the full two years of monitoring.

About 70 percent of participants were women, averaging about 63 years old.

The average starting WOMAC pain score was 23.1 and the function score was 35.1. Those scores improved slightly - each by about 2 points - throughout the study.

But when the researchers compared weather conditions to pain and function scores, they found that pain scores worsened by 1 point for each 10 percent increase in humidity. Function scores worsened by one point for every 10 hectopascals (0.29 of an inch) increase in barometric pressure.

For a change to be considered 'clinically relevant,' it has to alter the WOMAC score by at least ten points, Dorleijn's team writes in the journal Pain.

Since variations in humidity and barometric pressure are limited, they could account for changes of 5 to 6 WOMAC points at the most, they write.

White agreed that requiring a 10-point change to be significant is the accepted approach to using the WOMAC scale. But that doesn't mean the pain wasn't real, she said.

"This is about people seeing a little bit of change, whether it's the humidity or barometric pressure or function or pain," White said.

Apart from its small size, the study did have some limitations, White noted. For instance, the patients didn't have severe osteoarthtitis and the pain was only in one joint. Still, she thinks it was a good study.

"They did the best they can do, and they did find a little bit of change. They decided it wasn't significant." She said.

But, she said, just because findings didn't reach statistical significance from the researchers' point of view, they can be significant from the patients' point of view.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1ofAKlo Pain, online January 24, 2014.

Copyright © 2014, Reuters

This Article was originally published at - http://www.chicagotribune.com/health/sns-rt-us-weather-arthritis-20140211,0,1413207.story