Understanding Osteoarthritis And Natural Cures (1)

Imagine that your coming down from bed or perhaps, your car and suddenly as you put the foot down, a sharp pain shoots through your hip to your calf of your leg.
Normally, you would think such feeling is nothing special, until as the days and months go by, you begin to feel the pain spreading from your hip to your knees.
Chances are that you may be developing osteoarthritis, a degenerative disorder in which the joints begin to breakdown. The disease is not limited to old age as it were before. If you as above 40 years of age, then you must watch out for telltale signs of osteoarthritis.
If you are not careful, by the time you discover the damage, it must have gone far as the pain worsens and your joints begin to swell.
In Europe for instance, osteoarthritis was expected to hit 178million people in 2020. As the disease is, it is the major cause of disability in elderly women.
Men also suffer from osteoarthritis, but the ailment seem to affect women more may be due to nature and their physiology, since the disease affects knees and hips more than any other body parts.
Sadly though, there is still no cure for arthritis, but doctors and health researchers are pushing to see on how it could be abated or checked to the minimum.
Osteoarthritis has many different causes. A 20-year- research project by Prof. Mikko Haara at Kuopio University in Finland recently found that men with osteoarthritis in their fingers had a 42per cent higher risk of dying from heart disease. The researchers are now investigating whether the same factors are responsible for both cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis.
There is also the genetic aspect to the ailment, as 60 per cent of a person’s predisposition to the disease stems from the gene.
Then, there are the bones. Most people think bones are inert objects whose only job is to keep our bodies from collapsing. But bones are quite active tissues, constantly building and rebuilding themselves from the inside out. The sane proteins that help the body knit broken bones back together also may help repair cartilage.
Another curious fact is that people with strong, healthy bones- the kind that are least susceptible to the brittleness of osteoporosis- are at greater risk of developing osteoarthritis.
The interaction between bones and the cartilage does not tell the whole story. You also need to take into account the ligaments that connect bones to bones and the muscles that surround and stabilise the joints.
Ligaments can get stretched or torn and muscles can atrophy from under use. The stronger the muscles, the greater the load they take off the joint, thus, limiting damage to the cartilage.
Age contributes a lot to the worsening pressure on the bones as arthritis begins to spread to many parts such as knees, hips, and joints.
Over the years, experts have agreed that one sure way to check this debilitating ailment is through a combination of both conventional and natural cures.
To be cont’d

By Kevin Nengia