Managing
Your Arthritis…There
are more than 100 different types of arthritis, but all have one
thing in common: The pain can interfere with your ability to do the
things that you enjoy
Arthritis is the leading cause of disability in Americans older than
15.
The number of people with arthritis is staggering. In 2005,
66 million adults in the United States — nearly 1 in 3 — had
either been diagnosed with arthritis or were living with
undiagnosed chronic joint pain and other symptoms. Although
the risk of some types of arthritis, such as osteoarthritis,
increases with age, more than half of those affected by all
types of arthritis are younger than 65.
It
doesn’t have to be that way. If you have arthritis, there are steps
you can take, starting today, to protect your joints, reduce pain,
and improve mobility. But living with arthritis often requires a
multi-faceted approach, which can involve drug treatment, physical
therapy, exercise and even complementary therapies.
Better drugs with fewer side effects are also available for treating
the pain of arthritis
There
is a large arsenal of medications available to treat the various
kinds
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FAST FACTS
Five ways to treat arthritis — naturally!
Exercise
•
Diet
•
Heat and cold therapy
•
Acupuncture
•
Glucosamine and chondroitin |
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of
arthritis. New drugs have brought significant relief to
rheumatoid arthritis patients, although not without some
potentially dangerous side effects. Other promising new
drugs are emerging. For example, the U.S. Food and Drug
Administration recently approved an interleukin-1 inhibitor
for use in treating rheumatoid arthritis. Better drugs with
fewer side effects are also available for treating the pain
of osteoarthritis.
Despite the variety of medications available for arthritis, physical
therapy remains a cornerstone of traditional treatment. Physical
therapists focus on restoring or maintaining physical function by
designing an individualized treatment program for you. The physical
therapist first will thoroughly evaluate your pain, functional
ability, strength, and endurance levels, then will provide advice
about ways to ease pressure on your joints while building muscles to
support them. Physical therapy can take place at a hospital or
outpatient clinic, in the therapist’s office, or in your home. Some
activities can be done alone; others require the therapist’s
assistance.
One in four people with arthritis use some type of complementary
therapy
You
are likely to have much less guidance when it comes to deciding
whether to use complementary therapies, and which ones. Such
therapies literally run the gamut from A to Z — from acupuncture to
zinc supplements. And they’re popular: One widely cited 1997 paper
estimated that one in four people with arthritis used some type of
complementary therapy. Although hundreds of such therapies exist,
only a few have actually proved to be effective when evaluated in
rigorous studies. To become a wise consumer of complementary
therapies, become a skeptical one. Don’t buy into any treatment that
promises a cure. If you are contemplating any physical or
complementary treatment, you should first discuss it with your
doctor to make sure it will support, rather than hinder, your
arthritis management plan