From personal experience:
- Copper/magnetic bracelets: placebo, if that. And makes your clothes and wrist green.
- Fish oil, herbal pills, etc.: Effective for transfer of resources (cash) from patient to supplier (read the research)
- Lifestyle changes: losing weight, getting gentle exercise, diet*, physio, etc. Certainly help, esp. if applied early on.
- Really good consultant rheumatologist: potentially life changing (if you're referred early enough).
Arthritis comes in two basic scourges:
Osteo- is damage caused by accident or (most commonly) wear and tear. Generally can't be cured. Symptoms (pain) can be reduced by drugs, and severe damage alleviated by surgical intervention, depending on which joints are being considered (they told me hand surgery would have a worse outcome than leaving well alone). Hip and knee replacements can be very effective, but the success rate drops off markedly if the patient is overweight (or just big), and for second and any subsequent attempts (hard to get good fixings for the rawlplugs).
Rheumatoid is joint damage caused by immune system misbehavior. There's a huge range of conditions, some causing bone damage, some only affecting soft tissue/cartilage. There's a range of different tests to tell if you're susceptible to certain things, if the disease is active, and how active. Even joint temperature can be an indicator. Treatments are amazing nowadays. I'd even say reversal of symptoms is possible depending on what type it is (definitions overlap a lot), how long you've had it and how advanced it is. Most treatments are blunt instruments (there's clever stuff, but it's very expensive AND a right PITA to receive because of the delivery methods and tests during treatment).
In both sorts pain management is possible (cue the entertaining drugs...), and physio/occupational therapy (cue the entertaining occupational therapists...).
I've spent most of my life in engineering of one sort or another. I believe in cause & effect, and that things should stand up to scrutiny through the scientific method - if you can't find an association through statistical analysis, and if an effect isn't reproducible, then it's probably not real.
Most of the folklore stuff is based on misreading/misunderstanding/
deliberate misuse of research, or simply making exaggerated claims (e.g. fish and fish oils are generally good for you, so is olive oil, but no extracts will miraculously heal/reverse/stop your arthritis, and human joints aren't lubricated like C19th steam engines, and certainly not directly by what goes into your stomach).
My advice: don't plss about with folklore: go see your GP, having first thought about exactly what hurts, how and under what circumstances. Get a referral if it's rheumatoid. There is highly competent help out there, and effective treatments, but most of the vitamin supplements and over the counter stuff (magnets, copper, etc) are absolute hogwash, and
clinically proven to be so.
Sorry to be blunt, but I get really angry about the con-artist industry that's grown up peddling junk to people. It's worse in the USA where, because medicine is private, people self-medicate a lot more. Here everyone has a right to be properly assessed, and effective treatments prescribed (if they exist).
I'm in my 56th year. My arthritis started when I was 26-27. I wish (oh how I wish!), the stuff that's available now had been there thirty years ago. I'm feeling better than I have for many years, because the drugs I'm on do work (but take effect over a really long period of time), and the OTs' and Physios' exercises and advice do make a real difference (saved me from having a permanently bent spine, for a start), but most of the damage happened in the first few years or so, and what's gone can't be brought back again.
So get a move on: go see your GP. If it's osteo- there is pain relief and physio/OT advice available. If it's rheumatoid, it may still be possible to do something about it.
How long do you expect to live? How bad do you want your joints to be in your last decade or so? Do you want to trust that to purveyors of herbal pills and copper bracelets, or to people who've spent a decade or more in medical training and research the subject?
E.
*even the diet thing is NOT general. it all depends on exactly why you are getting the issues in the first place.
