A very simple yet effective arthritis treatment method is using heat as well as cold in different situations to get relief from the stiffness and pain in your joints. For heat treatment, using hot water bottles or a hot wheat pack and even a heat lamp over the exact spot where the pain is occurring will help you get relief. Or, you can use an electric blanket and take a warm shower and even bathe to relieve you off your morning stiffness and start a new day on a more positive note.
Having To Learn New Habits
For cold treatment, using cold packs over an inflamed and hot and tender joint should provide considerable relief, while in instances of severe pain, a physiotherapist may advise you a deep heat therapy treatment such as ultrasound. When applying different arthritis treatments, it is necessary to learn some new habits that will relieve your pain and help your body cope with arthritis and also mean not having to take drugs for relief.
Pain is a way in which the body warns you that something has gone wrong and you should pay heed to these signals, and you must try and stop the activity before it further tires the joints and causes excess pain. Also, you should try and plan your activities in a way that they do not end up causing you more pain. Another arthritis treatment you can use to get relief is to make sure that you only use your strongest muscles and joints. An example of this would be to use thigh muscles instead of the back muscles when lifting a heavy object, or using forearm muscles instead of the wrists to carry or lift or hold objects.
You could also think of using joint-saving gadgets as a form of arthritis treatment which is very helpful in making your routine tasks such as turning a tap and getting ready for work much easier. However, the usual arthritis treatment that most arthritics use is to take an arthritis drug, which have different effects on different people and which can also result in some unwanted side effects and adverse reactions. It also common for some people to take pain killers and analgesics as an arthritis treatment because they help control the pain that in turn is very necessary for the proper treatment of arthritis.
Unlike non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs, these pain killers cannot help relieve inflammation, which means that you may have to take narcotic analgesics, especially when your pain is extreme and severe. It is really up to you and your doctor to decide which form of arthritis treatment is best suited for your particular condition.