Osteoarthritis (oa) is a degenerative disease that affects the various bone joints, leading to painful movement and thereby limiting the patient's mobility. Knees, hips, joints of hands and legs are affected.

Symptoms of oa

The symptoms revolve around the bones and joints including:

 Pain and stiffness of the joints
 Swelling of the joints
 Inability to form a clench
 Difficulty holding things 
 Stooped posture 
 Weakness of legs and hands
 Reduced height over time

Treatment options in allopathy are limited to nonsteroidal analgesics to control pain and in severe cases, surgical correction, in case of oa. However, homeopathy takes into account the triggering symptoms, the associated symptoms, and the status of the immune system before deciding on a treatment regimen.

With this holistic approach, homeopathy achieve the following:

 Reduce the pain, swelling and stiffness
 Slows the pace of further degeneration
 Improves mobility of the affected joint (s)
 Improves the body's overall immune system, thereby allow the body to promote healing on its own
 Homeopathic intervention in the early phases is particularly helpful, as it will arrest disease progression
 It also enable better absorption of minerals and nutrients essential for bone health. This allows healing of existing bone fractures and avoids further bone damage by strengthening the bones
 Homeopathic treatment also enables the body's chemical state to withstand stress and illnesses better
 It vitalizes the body's natural healing and ability to repair itself, to create a better state of health and well-being

Some of the popular homeopathic medications based on areas and associated symptoms are listed below:

Knee joints:

 Bryonia alba: pain worsened with movement, relieved with rest; associated with swelling and stiffness of the joints; difficulty in climbing stairs.
 Calcarea carbonica: swelling and pain that is worsened when getting up from a seated position. The joints feel cold and painful.
 Sulphur: worse with climbing stairs, prolonged standing, feeling of warmth in the knees. 

Hip joints:

 Colcynthis: cramping pain improved by pressure.
 Rhus toxicodendron: pain when getting up from a seated position.
 Pulsatilla nigricans: associated with muscle stiffness and cramping.

Finger joints:

 Antimonium crudum: the pain pain gets worse in cold weather, improved by applying something warm) 
 Benzoic acid: there is an associated crackling sound when the fingers are moved or if there are nodes in the area of joints. The urine is highly offensive in these people. 
 Calcara fluorica: there are stony hard nodes formed in the joint area, greatly reducing the mobility.

These medications are safe, completely natural, do not induce habit formation, and are approved by fda. They don't just treat the symptoms but help manage the patient as a whole. This justifies why homeopathy is definitely a good option in treating osteoarthritis.

Homeopathy for Osteoarthritis: Why is it a Good Option?

Arthritis is a common musculoskeletal condition that affects elderly men and women. Joint pain, stiffness and inflammation are the most common symptoms of this condition. This pain can get so bad as to affect your movement and leave you unable to do simple things like walking up stairs or even simply turning a doorknob. 

Arthritis cannot be reversed but with medication and a few lifestyle changes, your quality of life can be improved.

Exercise and weight loss: Though it is difficult to do, losing weight can help relieve the pain of arthritis. This takes the pressure off your joints and increases the range of possible motions. Though exercising may be the last thing you want to do, it can help increase your flexibility and help strengthen your muscles. Aerobics, stretching and strength training are ideal for arthritic patients.
Assistive devices: Arthritis can make a person knock kneed or bow legged. Wearing unloading braces, shoe inserts or walking with a cane or shoe inserts can help redistribute your weight and take the pressure of your joints. It can also help relieve pain and prevent arthritis from worsening.
Eating right: Some types of food can worsen arthritic symptoms. This includes processed foods like white flour and sugar, yeast, chemical additives, gluten, hydrogenated and trans fats, milk products, caffeine, alcohol and tobacco. Hence, avoid consuming these foods and instead have a diet rich in fruits, vegetables, nuts and whole grain. You could also try alkaline foods like green leafy vegetables, wheatgrass and aloe vera.
Massage therapy: A massage not only de-stresses the body, but can also relieve muscle and joint pain by improving blood circulation. Massages also help break up muscular waste deposits and increase the amount of oxygen circulated in the body. This helps transport nutrients to tissues and carries toxins away. Ideally, an arthritic patient should have a massage 2-3 times a week in the beginning and at least twice a month once the condition has stabilised.
Supplements: Along with eating healthy, including a few supplements in your daily diet can also help alleviate arthritic symptoms. When it comes to rheumatic arthritis; the anti-inflammatory properties of vitamin C help fight arthritis by promoting bone and cartilage growth and reducing infection. Fish oil is rich in Omega-3 fatty acids that help reduce inflammation, Vitamin D is another supplement that helps relieve arthritic pain by helping the bones absorb calcium faster and preventing further loss of cartilage.

Arthritis - 5 Easy Ways You Can Ease Your Suffering

The shoulders are the most mobile joints in your body. Shoulder joints undergo wear and a tear over time and hence become unstable. Shoulder arthritis is one of the painful conditions affecting the shoulder joints. Arthritis not only takes a toll on the tendons and muscles, but also affects the ligaments and joints too. They usually cause symptoms such as joint pain, resulting in limited mobility.

Treatment:

Nonsurgical or Lifestyle treatments:

Take rest or avoid the activities that provoke pain or change the way of your arm movements.
Physical therapy boosts shoulder mobility.
Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) such as ibuprofen or aspirin alleviate pain and inflammation.
Corticosteroid injections in the shoulders can also help to ease the pain and inflammation, although temporarily.
Applying moist heat or ice packs over the shoulders for about half an hour at least thrice a day brings relief.
Drugs such as methotrexate can be administered in case one is suffering from rheumatoid arthritis (a chronic disease attacking multiple joints of the body).
Dietary supplements such as chondroitin and glucosamine may help reduce pain.
Surgical treatments (if your pain results in disability and does not lessen with nonsurgical options)

Join replacement surgery or arthroplasty involves replacing the damaged parts of the shoulder with a prosthetic (artificial) joint.
Few mild forms of arthritis may be treated using the Arthroscopic procedure (minimally invasive surgery). It requires a surgeon to ease the joint pain by making small incisions to  clean out  the joint. A tiny camera fitted into the joint guides the surgeon through the surgery.
Resection arthroplasty is a method that involves the surgical removal of the bone from the collar bone and substituting it with a scar tissue to treat arthritis of particular joints.

Everything You Need To Know About Shoulder Arthritis Treatment

Arthritis refers to extreme joint pain. It could either manifest in one of the joints in the body or more than one. At times, it occurs because of a vitamin deficiency. However, it can also advance with age. This is how arthritis can be easily diagnosed:

To diagnose arthritis, your specialist will consider the side effects and symptoms. They will then take a physical exam to check for swollen joints or loss of movement.

They will then use blood tests and X-ray to affirm the conclusion. X-ray and blood tests help in identifying the sort of arthritis you have. For instance, a great many people with rheumatoid arthritis have antibodies called rheumatoid components (RF) in their blood. X-rays are used to analyse osteoarthritis, normally uncovering lost ligament, bone deformities and in many extreme cases, a bone rubbing against another bone.

Sometimes, a needle is used to draw a little specimen of liquid from the joint for testing. This is done to eliminate different sorts of arthritis. In case your specialist speculates irresistible arthritis as a confusion of some other sickness, taking a sample of liquid from the influenced joint will typically affirm the finding and decide how it will be dealt with.

Depending on what kind of arthritis you have, your doctor will recommend you different therapies. However, some of the most common treatments for arthritis are as follows: 
Occupational Therapy

Certain therapies involve long-term treatment to treat the affected joint. With the assistance of an occupational therapist, you can learn simpler approaches to do your typical exercises. A therapist can show you how to do the following:
Maintain a strategic distance from positions that strain your joints.
Utilise your most healthy joints and muscles while saving weaker ones.
Use props to support certain joints.
Medication
Joint pain treatment will rely upon the nature and level of the condition. The principle objectives are to diminish aggravation and enhance the capacity of the influenced joints before the condition worsens. Your specialist will most likely recommend acetaminophen or a non-steroidal mitigating drug (NSAID), for example, Aleve.

Surgery
Different types of surgeries might be expected to lessen the inconvenience of joint inflammation or to recover the joint capacity. Synovectomy is the expulsion of a harmed connective tissue coating a joint depression. In case that ligament pain and irritation turn out to be genuinely chronic, or ligament joints turn out to be badly damaged, the answer may lie in surgical substitution.

Non-medical management of arthritis pain:
Besides medicine-based treatment for arthritis, there are many psychotherapeutic techniques to manage the same. Enhancing patients  mental state by showing them how to unwind and perform their every day exercises at a sensible pace will also help in finding a way to defeat mental anxiety and nervousness.

Arthritis - How Can It Be Diagnosed And Cured?

If you are suffering from arthritis, it is important for you to know about how it affects your knee and other joints. Arthritis is a chronic, systematic inflammatory disease which damages your joints and connective tissues. Your knee is commonly affected by arthritis and there are three primary types of arthritis that occur in the knees. They include osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and post-traumatic arthritis.

Types of arthritis 
The different types of arthritis affecting the knees occur due to different reasons. Osteoarthritis is a progressive condition, which wears away the joint cartilage over time. Rheumatoid arthritis is an inflammatory condition, which may occur at any age. Post-traumatic arthritis occurs after an injury is inflicted to the knee and may occur several years after a ligament injury or knee fracture.

Major symptoms

Arthritis pain may occur all of a sudden but develops slowly. In the early stages, the pain is observed in the morning after you have been inactive over the night. Pain is likely when you want to move around. Pain may be experienced even when immobile.
Periodic inflammation is a common symptom of arthritis of the knee. This happens because of the formation of bone spurs or excess fluids in your knee. The swelling gets pronounced after being inactive for a long period. The skin on your knee may look red and feel warm while you touch it. This may lead to chronic inflammation, which is very difficult to manage.
Treatment
There are several ways of treating knee arthritis. The mode of treatment depends on the severity and cause of knee arthritis. NSAIDS or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs are commonly prescribed for dealing with arthritis pain temporarily. Other medicines used for knee arthritis treatment are as follows:

Analgesics, which help in pain reduction act as good alternatives to NSAIDS.
Corticosteroids are used for reducing inflammation.
Certain DMARDs or disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs are used.
Certain injections that are used for helping with knee arthritis. They include:

Hyaluronic acid supplements, which ease the pain and inflammation by lubricating your knee joints.
Corticosteroid injections also soothe inflammation and pain.
You may also require a surgery for dealing with knee arthritis when other modes of treatment fail. The most common surgeries are as follows:

Total joint replacement, where your knee is replaced with a prosthetic made of metal, plastic or ceramic.
Osteotomy, where the knee bones are modified for controlling pressure and damage in the knees.
Arthroscopy, where an incision is made in the knee for removing damaged parts.
It is recommended for you to consult a doctor, if you experience any symptom of knee arthritis. Early treatment will prevent the condition from worsening.

Know if You Have Arthritis in the Knee

Acupuncture is a Chinese method of treatment which aims at maintaining the energy balance in the body. The procedure involves stimulating the energy channels of the body by using fine steel needles. It enhances the production of endorphins (pain controlling hormones) in the body, therefore less pain.


Signs you are suffering from arthritis
Arthritis is a disorder that is characterized by inflammation and swelling in the joints. The symptoms of arthritis are tenderness in the joints, fatigue, fever and stiffness in the joints that worsen in the morning. Initially, the smaller joints in the body are affected; it then progresses to joints in the elbows, wrists and the knees. 


Causes behind it
Arthritis is caused when the immune system starts attacking the membrane surrounding the joints. Inflammation occurs, resulting in destruction of the bone and cartilage. It causes the ligaments and the tendons holding the joint to weaken. The joints then starts to lose their original alignment and shape.


Dietary guidelines you must follow
You need to follow dietary guidelines such as avoiding refined and processed foods as they can contribute to the inflammation of the joints. You also need to steer clear of foods which may trigger a reaction from your immune system. Mild exercises to strengthen the joints may be performed to improve mobility.


Acupuncture and arthritis
The procedure begins with the practitioner applying alcohol to the affected spot and tapping the area with a needle. The disorder determines the number of needles required, the spots of insertion and the depth to which they have to be inserted. The duration for which the needles are kept in the body ranges from a few minutes to an hour. In order to enhance the effect of the needles, they may be heated or energized electrically. You may experience a tingling sensation in case electricity is used. 


Acupuncture is a holistic method of treatment that has no side effects. It does not involve chemicals; so it is safe to use. It will not cure the disorder, but can reduce the pain to a large extent. One of the added benefits of this procedure is that no matter, which part of the body is subjected to this process, it does help calm your mind down.

Arthritis - How Acupuncture is used to Treat it

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