Natural Treatments for Arthritis

Anti-inflammatory medications are a mainstay of the pharmaceutical industry. They were developed in an effort to suppress inflammation. Millions of people suffer some form of chronic swelling in their bodies and need ways to cope with pain.  Harmful side effects have become a major problem with these and other medications.

Inflammation is one of the main causes of problems with aging. Our body creates natural heat, swelling, pain, and redness to help it heal from irritations. Four principal causes of chronic inflammation are: infection, allergy or chemical toxicity, hormonal imbalance, and injury. Suppressing symptoms may ease pain, but it doesn’t address the underlying cause.

Infections cause peptic ulcers, Crohn’s disease, irritable bowel syndrome, heart valve disease, arrhythmias, atherosclerosis, certain types of cancer, and some forms of arthritis. Bacteria and viruses can hide in the tissues making them difficult to detect with normal methods. Blood tests including C-Reactive Protein (CRP) and others indicate chronic inflammation and guide your physician to search further for infection.

Patty was diagnosed with Rheumatoid arthritis many years ago, when she came to see me, she was on methotrexate which is a powerful chemotherapy drug sometimes used for arthritis. I did some tests and found she had Lyme disease, which we were able to treat successfully. She no longer has arthritis.

Allergy and chemical toxicity also lead to chronic inflammation. Many people eat foods that their bodies don’t tolerate well. Dairy, sugar, wheat products, and a diet too high in fried or processed foods can cause irritable bowel or leaky gut syndromes. When digestion malfunctions for long periods of time, people could develop other inflammatory conditions such as arthritis. Eliminating possible allergens from your diet for a period of time allows symptoms to disappear. If you’re having a lot of joint pain, try eliminating sugar from your diet for 2 weeks, and see if you get better.

Chemical sensitivity can lead to inflammation. It is not easy to measure but levels of specific toxins are measurable. Mercury poisoning is one such cause of chronic inflammation. Injecting a chelating agent (a chemical that draws metals out of the tissues), then collecting urine and measuring the levels of heavy metals reveals whether the tissues hold dangerous amounts.

Another cause of arthritis is connected to hormonal imbalance. Mary came to me after being offered antidepressants, sleeping pills and Vioxx for a diagnosis of fibromyalgia—severe aches in her shoulders and neck. She had a sedentary job, didn’t exercise much, and had problems sleeping since the onset of menopause three years before.  Since the sleep disorder began with menopause, we began by looking at her hormone levels. We used the results to prescribe bio-identical hormones to replace the missing elements. She improved within two months after her body began to balance.

Injuries are another place where we can have problems with arthritis. Sometimes we were injured doing something at age 16, which is now, at age 50 causing chronic pain. How did that happen? Possibly, we’ve re-injured the same joint for years doing various things but ignoring it. The best treatment for a recurrent injury is to find the right exercise for healing. Usually, as we get older, ligaments and joints get more sensitive to the mechanics of all the muscles involve. With a knee injury for example, there are seven muscles above the knee involved in movement-3 in the hamstrings, 4 in the quadriceps. All of them need to be working together with equal strength in order for your knee to function smoothly.

With an accurate diagnosis of the root cause of a painful inflammatory condition, a practitioner can use specific natural treatments to heal it, not to just temporarily alleviate pain. It’s not that you’ll never take another anti-inflammatory drug while healing your body. If you have acute pain, or are in the middle of figuring out what exactly is going on, you may need to take medication to stay out of pain. Why suffer with pain if there is an understanding that may solve the problem?