Pain management used to be a punch line – “Take two aspirins and call me in the morning.” Now it’s more of a lifestyle with three themes.

Naturally, the first theme is a fast help. We’re proud of Revalife®, which was developed at the University of Georgia as an advanced non-prescription topical cream. This patented product relieves the misery of strains, sprains, and joint pains, including pain relief for osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. (Warning: some people are sensitive to menthol. If that happens to you, discontinue use.) Users sometimes supplement Revalife® with hot (or warm) packs to improve circulation and relax muscles, or with cold (or cool) packs to reduce inflammation and ease pain or muscle spasms. Some users alternate between hot and cold packs.

Another theme strengthens the muscles around the joint. Typically this involves low- or no-impact exercises (swimming and so forth). The exercise also helps work off calories and reduce fatigue, so joints will have less weight and wear on them. Relaxation training can be almost as important as strengthening because it relieves muscle stresses caused by pain. Some common relaxation techniques used for this involve faith-based activities, meditation, controlled breathing, and posture adjustment.

The final theme is dietary, and new insights keep emerging there. Certain natural products in foods can help, and it’s not just glucosamine, chondroitin, or MSM. These days food oils and spices are getting a lot of attention.

• Some of the oils in avocados and soy reduce pain and disability from osteoarthritis. These oils are sterols, which are safe and gentle steroid-like anti-inflammatory compounds from plants.
• Sustained relief from the pain of rheumatoid arthritis is available from fish oils (which have eicosapentaenoic and docosahexaenoic acids, also known as EPA and DHA), and from borage oil (which is a botanical that contains gamma-linolenic acid ).

• For osteoarthritis in the knees, capsule-sized doses of ginger can provide as much pain relief as someone would get from a standard dose of an oral drug, diclofenac. When ginger and diclofenac are used together, the results are even better.

• The yellow color of curry comes from the spice turmeric, which gets it from an anti-inflammatory natural product, curcumin. Curcumin helps ease osteoarthritis symptoms. But it is hard to dissolve, so it passes through the gut. Ultrabotanica sells clinical-strength dissolvable curcumin under the brand Ultracϋr®: it has rapid effects because the curcumin is easy for the body to access.

Want to read the science for yourself?

• Ryan L. Ragle and Allen D. Sawitzke, Nutraceuticals in the Management of Osteoarthritis: A Critical Review, Drugs & Aging, 29(9):717-731 (September 2012), at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/23018608
• George W. Reed, Katherine Leung, Ronald G. Rossetti, Susan VanBuskirk, John T. Sharp, and Robert B. Zurier, Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis with Marine and Botanical Oils: An 18-Month, Randomized, and Double-Blind Trial, Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2014:857456 (2014), at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3977504/
• Gill Paramdeep, Efficacy and Tolerability of Ginger (Zingiber officinale) in Patients of Osteoarthritis of Knee, Indian Journal of Physiology and Pharmacology, 57(2):177-183 (April-June 2013), at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24617168
• Yunes Panahi, Ali-Reza Rahimnia, Mojtaba Sharafi, Gholamhossein Alishiri, Amin Saburi, and Amirhossein Sahebkar, Curcuminoid Treatment for Knee Osteoarthritis: A Randomized Double-blind Placebo-controlled Trial, Phytotherapy Research, 28(11):1625-1631 (November 2014), at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24853120