Natural Options For Joint Pain

Joint pain can be caused by a variety of diseases and conditions such as the various forms of arthritis, tendinitis, bursitis, or even fibromyalgia. Knowing what type of joint pain you have, and what may be causing that pain, can go a long way towards helping to reduce or eliminate your chronic pain.

Because there are numerous causes of chronic joint pain, the types of treatments used by doctors will often vary from one case to another. Like any type of medical treatment however, your response to a given treatment is not necessarily how another person will respond. Some people may not do well with one treatment, but do fine with another. The severity of the symptoms and the underlying causes also play a role in what types of treatments are used.

Altering your lifestyle is a good place to start your quest for pain relief, but this is often the hardest for most people. Foods high in caffeine, sugar, and salt are known to increase flare-ups of joint pain, but people find these foods difficult to purge from their diet. Poor nutrition will also speed up the thinning and loss of cartilage.

[/caption]Chronic joint pain can also be caused by repetitive movements such as sitting or standing all day, excess stress caused by carrying or lifting too much weight too often, and self injuries caused by wearing high heeled shoes or participating in high impact sports or exercises.

In most cases, doctors will recommend the use of standard anti-inflammatory medications. These could be over-the-counter drugs such as Ibuprofen, aspirin, or Motrin; however, these drugs destroy sulfur while being metabolized by the liver, and the body needs sulfur to rebuild cartilage. When the over-the-counter medications don’t work well enough, doctors often prescribe stronger versions of those same drugs, which are known as Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs or NSAIDs.

If chronic joint pain is caused by inflammation, doctors often opt to inject special steroid medicines. These work similar to NSAIDs, but they’re much faster acting and more potent too. These drugs can be dangerous to the kidneys and liver when used for long periods of time.

If you want to try a more natural and holistic approach, begin by boosting your body’s immune system by giving it the vitamins, minerals and essential nutrients it’s often lacking. The body’s immune system will get a boost from changing the types of foods you eat, and this is usually recommend as part of the first steps towards natural healing.

Eliminating sugars and simple starches from your diet for instance, and adding more fresh fruits and vegetables is an excellent first step. You also need to add good healthy proteins and fats too though, because these foods also have essential minerals and vitamins the body needs, that can’t always be gotten through vegetables alone.

Adding omega-3 fatty acids to your diet is an excellent way to help reduce joint pain caused by inflammation and swelling while helping to start improving your overall nutrition and health at the same time. Omega-3 can be gotten by including fresh fish or flaxseed oil supplements in your meal planning.

Adding herbal supplements to your daily routine which are extremely high in a variety of nutrients is another recommended step. Taking alfalfa, kelp, or parsley each day for instance, will give your body concentrated vegetables in a capsule form. And these concentrated vegetables are extremely high in a wide variety of vitamins, minerals, and trace essential elements.

The natural and alternative health approach to resolving health problems within the body usually involves taking care of the whole body. You can’t usually treat just one thing successfully, because everything is so tightly connected. This is why taking natural supplements is so important. For instance, MSM replaces the sulfur lost when the body detoxifies pain relievers.

Since joint pain can be caused by such a wide variety of things, the changes you make may or may not work right away. If you know, or suspect you know, what’s causing your chronic joint pain though, you can usually get a good idea of what changes to start with first. Regardless of the cause of your joint pain, your rehabilitation will be speedier when your pain is controlled.