Topical and Oral Herbal Pain Remedies

Submit Manuscript | http://medcraveonline.com Int J Complement Alt Med 2015, 1(4): 00021 as many as 40 million Americans suffer with osteoarthritis. The most commonly recognized causes of arthritis are genetic predisposition, advancing age, obesity, trauma and “wear and tear.” However, the ‘wear and tear’ theory is probably an oversimplification, because many elderly people never develop arthritis, after years of wear and tear [1]. The degeneration of joints in all types of arthritis involves ongoing biochemical processes that negatively alter metabolism essential to maintaining healthy joints. Although conventional medical diagnostics attempt to assign patients a differential diagnosis of one specific kind of arthritis, in reality, many patients exhibit a continuum of symptoms. For example, even in those individuals who are officially diagnosed with osteoarthritis, many pro-inflammatory cytokines are released. This may not be due to the immune dis-regulation associated with rheumatoid arthritis, but instead can be caused by a myriad of other factors, such as toxicity and high levels of oxidative stress, which lead to accelerated tissue destruction [2].