Osteoarthritis Treatment

Effective osteoarthritis treatments that go beyond pain medications

Osteoarthritis is perhaps as debilitating, over the long term. The bad news for the osteoarthritic patient is that medical science has no cure. The current osteoarthritis treatments are limited to the alleviation of pain. If you are diagnosed with osteoarthritis, the standard osteoarthritis treatment is to prescribe a pain medication. Who wants to live under such a standard?

If you have been diagnosed with osteoarthritis and prescribed a pain pill as your only recourse, think again. With a good nutritional strategy, you can reap huge benefits, reducing pain within the space of a single week, eventually reversing your osteoarthritis, and improving your overall health for good.

Before we look at osteoarthritis treatment in terms of nutrition, it should be noted that, if you're overweight, try to lose those unwanted pounds! The excess weight just puts additional and unnecessary stress on vulnerable joints. Drinking plenty of water, those 6-8 glasses a day we all know about, is also important. The water helps flush accumulated toxins from your body.

One of the most effective osteoarthritis treatments, among nutritional considerations, relates to the proper balance of calcium to magnesium. The ratio of calcium to magnesium intake for healthy bones and joints is roughly 2:3. Americans have one of the highest rates of osteoarthritis in the world, with the average calcium to magnesium ratio an unhealthy 10:1! In these ratios, a certain hormone is triggered to remove old dead bone tissue, while its counterpart hormone, which is supposed to channel new nutrients to bones and joints, is suppressed. This results in a net loss of bone, leading to osteoarthritis and osteoporosis.

Given these facts, it's not unreasonable to conclude that perhaps an underlying cause of these conditions is not, in fact, due to 'wear and tear' joint degeneration, but rather an overload of calcium and a deficiency of magnesium.

One way to address this condition is to reduce your calcium intake and take a magnesium supplement of 600mg per day. Several clinical studies have shown that magnesium supplementation at this dosage has resulted in increased bone density and significant reduction of pain in as little as nine months, even in quite elderly patients! You may experience reduced pain in just a week! Now that's an osteoarthritis treatment we can all applaud!

Other supplemental nutrients of value as osteoarthritis treatments include the B-complex vitamins as well as vitamins A, C and E and the trace mineral zinc.

There are many conditions which reflect years of nutritional deficiencies. As we age, many nutrients are not as readily absorbed, so it's important to monitor any deficiencies to see if supplementation is advisable. Speak to your doctor about having lab tests which can determine nutritional deficiencies.

The importance of a good diet cannot be stressed enough. Young people can get away with poor dietary habits – for a while. However, over a lifetime, the body ultimately suffers the effects. Who knows how many chronic illnesses are preventable?

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