Q: I have Rheumatoid Arthritis and like reading a lot. Recently, I feel
severe hurting when holding the book. Is there any treatment or device that can
alleviate the problem?
A: Rheumatoid Arthritis is a systemic autoimmune disease. The disease can
cause damage in various joints of human body. Currently, there are several
methods suggested to you to alleviate your hand pains and hurts:
Western medicine treatment
Western medicines will help to relieve the symptoms and resist inflammation.
However, some side effects may occur and the disease tend to relapse again and
again and is hard to be cured. Long-term use may cause certain side effects, so
the general condition should be monitored carefully.
Traditional Chinese medicine treatment:
Rheumatoid Arthritis should be treated timely at the early stage. TCM
treatment can play a role in activating blood, dredging channels, resisting
inflammation and stopping pains, thus effectively treating symptoms and driving
away internal pathogenic factors that cause pains.
In western medicine, the medicines applied mainly include non-steroidal
anti-inflammatory painkillers, immunosuppressants, and hormone drugs. Long-term
use of anti-inflammatory to relieve pain medications will cause gastrointestinal
bleeding, peptic ulcers, and prolonged use of immunosuppressants will damage the
liver, kidney and other organs, suppress hematopoietic function of bone marrow ,
cause anemia and hair loss. So, for the treatment of rheumatic diseases, Hou’s
therapy is suggested to treat patients with their individualized illness
condition. Meridian guidance, acupoints therapy, moxibustion, fire needle
therapy, Jiugong Huiyang therapy and drug iontophoresis are combined
scientifically to treat Rheumatoid Arthritis. The treatments will strengthen
liver and kidney, improve physical constitute and immunity, enhance disease
resisting and drug absorption abilities. After this, systemic drug application,
functional exercise and dietary instructions are combined to achieve the purpose
of treating Rheumatoid Arthritis.
Rheumatoid Arthritis is a long-term refractory disease and will reduce
physical constitute over time. The treatment effects won’t be obvious if the
patients have poor physical constitute. Hou’s therapy considers the combination
of physical therapy at the same time of drug treatment, and functional exercise
and dietary therapy are also combined to get the maximal treatment effects.