Reversing Osteoarthritis (Prevent, Treat & Turnaround Arthritis Naturally)

Osteoarthritis is a major joint disorder. It affects millions of people worldwide - and, i could affect many more, including YOU!

There is no easy answer-much less a cure for osteoarthritis, because conventional or prescription medications have nothing' much to offer, much 'less to repair, or rebuild, the osteoarthritic joint. Besides, they tend to have a host of side-effects-some of them serious.

Glucosamine and chondroitin are natural dietary supplements, or 'nutrients.' They have joint health-promoting, disease-preventing, and therapeutic properties. They also get to the 'source' of the osteoarthritic problem, and revamp joint cartilage - safely.

Isn't this enough reason for you to try them out [along with other natural herbs and options]- to bring back the smile to your joint/s and promote optimal health and well-being, naturally and gently ?

Rajgopal Nidamboor, PhD, is a Board-Certified wellness physician, Fellow of the College of Chest Physicians [FCCPJ, Member of the Center of Applied Medicine [M-CAMJ, writer-editor, independent researcher, commentator, critic, columnist, author, and publisher. His special interests include natural, integrative, and nutritional medicine. He lives in Navi Mumbai, India.

Jawahar Nidamboor, MSc [UK], BPharm, specialises in industrial pharmaceutics. He lives in the UK.

Advances in modern medicine are a staple of our daily news. Put simply, impressive medical gains have been made in improving the average person's life span, while offering them a quality of life that could not be imagined one hundred years earlier.

The newest developments in medicine and surgery offer impressive capabilities to replace joints and other organs as well as treat infection, allergy, and inflammation, all right. However, despite 'miracles' achieved through pharmaceutical innovations and surgery, drug adverse effects and surgical failures continue to occur and not infrequently too.

While hospitals, clinics, and pharmacies have begun to establish quality control systems to reduce the incidence of medical and surgical errors, unexpected serious adverse effects, including death, remain a component of drug treatment. Clearly, there is a need to be able to support chronic medical conditions without necessarily resorting to drug therapy.

While medicine has also ignored, even belittled integrative medicine and naturopathy, natural-based treatments offer major, holistic support for diseases of aging without the risk of adverse effects and medical complications. In other words, the dietary and natural approaches employed by integrative and naturopathic practitioners provide significant symptomatic support without the risk of side-effects, typically experienced with drugs.

In Reversing Osteoarthritis Rajgopal Nidamboor introduces the reader to natural approaches needed to treat osteoarthritis without the need for medication, or less medication. He makes the case simple and clear: that although there is a wide range of medical and surgical treatments for arthritis, most are unnecessary ... if the patient were to implement dietary and exercise modifications as well as use specific nutritional supplementation.

While many individuals who develop disabling arthritis of their hip or knee joints opt for surgery, Raj argues that surgery may be avoided, if natural supports are instituted early on, much before the disorder begins to spread its relentless tentacles and/or cascades the joints. This is not all. Raj also explains how the use of natural supplements may be able to prevent arthritis from developing in the first place.

Although medicine for long has ignored the research that supports the use of natural supplementation, Raj discusses journal and other studies that demonstrate the effective use of supplementation.

While medical literature now acknowledges that, in contrast to drug therapy, supplementation poses no risk of side-effects, or iatrogenic disease, the biggest problem for most patients, unfortunately, is the fear that using a natural treatment programme without the permission of their family doctor would be a waste of time and money as well as risky, or dangerous. Or, they may have a certain trepidation that alternative medicine has not been 'scientifically so well proven: although there is increasing research demonstrating its benefits.

Understandably nutritional treatments are not drugs; they do not produce instantaneous results; besides, most have to be implemented for a number of months before changes are noted. However, the idea that natural remedies are dangerous and ineffective is largely the self-serving opinion of the medical establishment and the drug industry. Prohibiting patients from trying natural remedies and making dietary and lifestyle changes is an effort for the medical practitioner to control the patient at the expense of permitting safe, effective, and inexpensive natural remedies.

Well, the silver-lining is - the growing interest in naturopathic treatment and nutritional medicine is changing and transforming the public's respect and use of natural programmes. It is in this context that Raj's writing, yet again, introduces the reader to effective, cost-saving, risk-free nutritional approaches that may be used in addition to, or in place of, prescribed drug treatments.

The most common form of joint affection, osteoarthritis [OA) is a degenerative disorder. It affects millions of people worldwide - it's ostensibly more common than heart disease and diabetes.

Call it a paradox, or what you may, one major fact remains: osteoarthritis is just going to expand in its intensity, and also get firmly 'rooted' in one's middle years, sooner rather than later. Research estimates that it may afflict over 250 million worldwide in the next 15 years. The joint disorder reportedly affects 15-20 million people in India - every year. To cull another example, clinicians approximate that over three million people visit their doctor for OA, in the UK, every year.

There is no easy answer, much less a 'cure' for osteoarthritis. Forget about lasting relief. The rationale is: conventional medicine has nothing much to offer, much less to repair, or rebuild, an osteoarthritic joint. What's more, most prescription medicines have a host of side-effects, some of them serious - despite the fact that they 'ease' the symptoms of osteoarthritic pain and distress. This isn't all. NSAIDs [non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), for instance, offer relief from OA pain, all right - but, they are evidenced, no less, to cause and/or trigger serious side-effects.

NSAIDs are a large group of medications used to treat pain and inflammation [the response of the immune system to infection). There are several types of NSAIDs- aspirin being the most common. Other examples are ibuprofen, naproxen, piroxicam and nabumetone. Notwithstanding their clear efficacy in the management of inflammation, the veritable 'hub' of arthritic pain, NSAIDs are a significant cause of concern for adverse events, particularly gastrointestinal ulceration, or bleeding, and compromised kidney function.

This, inevitably, leads us to one big question - is there a way out of this 'complexity: even if osteoarthritis is not life-threatening; but, grossly disabling, if left untreated and unattended?

Yes - there is hope. In the form of natural dietary supplements, or natural 'nutrients: glucosamine and chondroitin - at a time when conventional medicine is quite restricted in its ability in addressing the flagrant symptoms of osteoarthritis. It also does not help you get over it -lock, stock and barrel.

The two 'nutraceuticals' - glucosamine and chondroitin - are more than useful and dependable in managing OA. Nutraceuticals are phytochemicals, or functional foods; they are natural, bioactive chemical compounds that have health-promoting, disease-preventing and medicinal properties. In addition to reversing the damage caused by osteoarthritis, glucosamine and chondroitin 'touch down' at the 'root' of the OA problem to revamp joint cartilage.

Besides, research, during the recent past, has made exciting strides. Research evidences that dietary supplementation with cartilage, or its key chemical components - glucosamine and chondroitin - can help protect and/or restore damaged cartilage. It also contends that the two nutraceutical supplements enhance that feeling of well-being, primarily because your joints are growing [a] new. Next, they infer, no less, that the duo restores the 'cushioning' between the spaces - where the bones meet - with healthy cartilage.

Yet, cautious optimism is obligatory. The two, separately, or in combination, do not hold the magic wand to blow your symptoms, or problems, away. What they actually do is provide palpable relief from pain and also reduce the difficulty of movement that is common in osteoarthritic patients.

Think all this sounds exaggerated - or, well-orchestrated hard sell or hoopla? The fact is: Scientifically-based clinical studies offer a reliable 'solid ground' in favour of glucosamine and chondroitin in real pain relief for painful joints - a long-term treatment plan you'd call upon and trust.

This handy book brings to you dependable information on glucosamine and chondroitin, based on scientific facts and analyses. It takes a realistic view of other treatment options too, including the role of conventional medications, alternative remedies and other nutritional supplements.

The best part: what you'd also get to know and appreciate is not a panacea, but a realistic, workable plan of action based on safety, and well-being, with minimum risks and/or side-effects.

Isn't this reason enough for you to give glucosamine and chondroitin, including other useful natural supplements, a real, good chance to 'engineer' a safe, welcome break from pain for your ailing joints ?