Get Arthritis Relief

Pool workouts could be your ticket to improving the range of motion in stiff, inflamed joints. In a British study of 106 sedentary people with knee and hip osteoarthritis, more than half the group performed hour - long pool exercises twice weekly, while the rest received educational treatment material. After one year, the exercisers had significantly greater mobility and flexibility and less pain than those who weren’t diving into the pool.

“Water takes stress off joints and blocks some of the pain sensation, allowing people who normally can’t exercise to engage in activity, loosen stiff joints, strengthen muscles, and see lasting results,” says Mary Rodts, a registered nurse with orthopedic certification and assistant professor at Rush College of Nursing in Chicago.

Contact the Arthritis Foundation at (800) 283-7800 for a free brochure about water exercise and arthritis, and to locate Arthritis Foundation aquatic classes in your area.

Cure Arthritis? Right!
 by: Patricia R. Moynihan

Arthritis sufferers are daily bombarded with new, better, more exciting treatments. Try Enbrel! Try Humira! Miracle drugs! Get your NSAIDS! Get your DMARDS! Pump more chemicals into your system. Side effects? What side effects? You have a choice; accept the side effects or get sicker and sicker.

In order to allay our fears, the drug companies publish the results of their clinical tests. This double blind study proved that that lethal chemical reduced your swelling more than another, equally lethal chemical.

Do they think they’re playing with babies? Yes. That’s exactly what they think. Arthritis is such a horrible, debilitating disease that we’ll try anything to reduce the symptoms. And that’s exactly what these awful drugs do. They reduce the symptoms, temporarily. As the symptoms creep back, your rheumatologist increases the drug or experiments with other lethal concoctions to reduce your swelling or pain. We’re told there’s NO cure for arthritis. We’re told that no one knows the cause. Really! More that thirty years ago we sent men to play golf on the moon. But we can’t pin point even one cause for this crippling disease?

It’s time for a reality check. The drug companies will continue to pump out really expensive chemicals, ostensibly helpful. Our doctors will continue to serve up the concoctions fed to them by the drug compaines. Unless we refuse to go along with this travesty. We don’t need a revolution. We don’t even need to take on our doctors or the drug companies. We only need to pool our resources and conduct our own quiet experiments.

We need to experiment with our habits. Just take one aspect of our life and alter it for one month. For example, are you a heavy coffee drinker? I’m pretty well wired to the ceiling by mid-day. Cut coffee from your diet for one month. Document any changes to your system resulting from this. You may, of course, suffer withdrawal symptoms but you may also experience a very welcome reduction in arthritic pain and swelling.

That’s just one suggestion. We have lots more. Feed-back from our brave experimenters will eventually allow us to make real recommendations. The revolution has started!

This article was posted on November 18, 2004 in www.ArticleCity.com