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How Ginger Can Help Soothe Persistent Joint Pain
I received an email from an HSI member who said she'd benefited from using ginger to ease her joint and arthritis pain and wanted to know more about how it helps in this area.
Arthiritis: Ancient cure shows effects against painful joints
As I mentioned yesterday, ginger has a wide range of benefits. It can treat an upset stomach and in Ayurvedic and Traditional Chinese Medicine, it has been used as an anti-inflammatory agent for thousands of years.
In a recent study, scientists set out to test this ancient cure against the modern symptoms of osteoarthritis (OA). They recruited 247 patients, ages 18 and older, from 10 clinical centres throughout the US. Each had mild to severe OA of the knee, as defined by the American College of Rheumatology classification criteria.
Once the study began, the participants began a one-week washout period, during which they did not take any anti-inflammatory or analgesic medications. (Up to 4 grams a day of acetaminophen was allowed as a 'rescue drug,' and up to 325 mg of aspirin was permitted for blood thinning.) After the washout, the patients were randomly assigned to take either a 255 mg-capsule of ginger extract or a placebo each day for six weeks.
At baseline and throughout the study, the researchers used a 100-mm visual analog scale (VAS) to measure patients' pain and their response to treatment. Patients rated their pain on a line; one end of the line represented feeling in the best condition, while the other end of the line represented the worst possible pain. Afterward, the researchers converted their ratings into numeric values.
To be admitted into the study, patients had to experience knee pain between 40 mm and 90 mm on the VAS when they first stood up after sitting. The authors looked for an improvement of 15 mm or better in this score as the main efficacy measurement. They also used secondary measures like pain after walking 50 feet, self-reported quality of life, and score on the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities osteoarthritis (WOMAC) index, which is a 24-question tool that assesses pain, stiffness, function, and total impact of arthritis pain.
Arthiritis: Ginger extract reduces arthritis pain and stiffness
After six weeks of treatment, both groups showed improvement. But in every assessment category, the ginger extract group showed greater results. Sixty-three percent of patients in the ginger group improved their VAS score by 15 mm or more, while only half of the control group reported such gains.
In fact, on average, the ginger group improved 8.1 mm more than the placebo group. The ginger group showed nearly twice as much improvement in pain after walking 50 feet, and also showed significant gains in all four points of the WOMAC index. The greatest impact was seen in stiffness, where ginger produced nearly a 20-point improvement over baseline measures.
Ginger is generally regarded as safe, but it can cause some minor side effects. In this study, patients in the ginger group reported mostly mild gastrointestinal effects like belching, stomach upset, heartburn, and a bad taste in the mouth.
If you suffer with arthritis pain and stiffness, haven't found much relief, and are wary of taking painkillers like ibuprofen and acetaminophen, consider giving ginger extract a try. It won't interfere with other medications, and it won't damage your kidneys like acetaminophen or aspirin.
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