Arthritis
Relief From Arthritis Pain
Arthritis treatments for pain relief and healing
Arthritis treatments come in all forms. Since osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, treatments that I mention will refer to treating it as opposed to other types. After all, osteoarthritis is the type of arthritis that most people suffer from as they age.
It is interesting to note that virtually everyone over the age of 50 has or will have some type of painful arthritic condition (usually osteoarthritis). This type of arthritis attacks the parts of our skeleton where the most weight is placed - places like the neck, the lower back, the hips, knees, the base of the big toe, and the base of the thumb.
The loss of cartilage due to wear and tear is the primary cause of osteoarthritis. Cartilage is the hard rubbery gristle found at the ends of long bones within a joint. It is made of a criss-cross pattern of something called glycosaminoglycans. Inside the matrix, we find cells that scientists call chondrocytes. It is the chondrocytes that help make necessary new cartilage.
Arthritis begins to develop when normal synthesis and normal breakdown of cartilage goes haywire. This happens because parts of the glycosaminoglycan matrix are lost. In its place, water begins to gather. With water, comes enzymes that start to deteriorate the cartilage. The result: cracking and wearing away of cartilage and the resulting pain as bone begins to touch bone.
If you are starting to feel sharp pain or dull continuous, bothersome pain in your joint areas, you would be wise to go for standard x-rays and sometimes ultrasound or magnetic resonance imaging to determine the degree of damage the arthritis has caused.
Traditional treatments for this type of arthritis may involve a combination of any of the following: pain medication, education (to learn what's happening to your body), specified non-impact or low-impact exercises, occasional physical and occupational therapy, canes, walkers, heat or ice, and in many cases weight loss.
As you can see, there are few to no types of treatment you couldn't think of yourself if carefully considered. The medications used to treat arthritis include analgesics, nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, topical analgesics, and joint injections with either glucocorticoid (steroid) or hyaluronan (lubricants).
These medications work well to give pain relief for most people and are recommended while you try various supplements to try to rebuild cartilage in your joints. Cartilage is important as you can imagine because it serves as a buffer or 'shock absorber' for the shocks your bones take each time you impact them by running or kneeling or bending etc.
There has been some work completed to create drugs that block or slow down the enzymes mentioned earlier that slowly dissolve the cartilage in your joints.
More usual are surgical procedures like arthroscopic debridement or total joint replacement that some people choose to undergo. Arthroscopic debridement should be avoided because it has been found to less effective than it was once thought to be.
Polymer spacers have also been used in some joints with some success. Discuss your options with your physician.
If you are relatively young, you may try a procedure that removes a wedge of bone to make the leg line up straighter so less pressure is placed on the knee for example. It however only buys time. You will still need knee replacement and in its current state, the surgical procedure can be a six-month recovery process.
One of the newer kinds of treatment for young people is to actually take cartilage cells from healthy cartilage nearby and put them into the damaged area. The problem with this is that only a certain number of cells can be generated from the procedure. Two surgical procedures are required and a six-month recovery process.
But don't despair, hope has come from scientists at Britain’s Cardiff University. They have found a type of stem cell that can be changed into chondrocytes (cartilage cells) in a laboratory.
By growing these cells, scientists will be able to grow however many cells they need and then put them into the damaged area of the joint. This treatment seems promising and the team at Cardiff is now testing it out on animals. They hope to start a clinical trial soon. At present there is no product on the market that you can buy to do this and no treatment currently offered by any physician.
So hope for those wanting arthritis pain relief is not far off. Medical procedures take time to develop and test. When we are suffering with arthritis pain, we want faster results. Unfortunately, we need to use supplements and the other medications mentioned above in order to help reduce the pain of arthritis until cartilage replacement treatments reach our physicians. These may include pain relief supplements like Hydraflex from Biocentric Health or other more traditional supplements that work to stimulate cartilage growth in the joints.
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