Osteoarthritis, a degenerative joint disease, is the most common joint disease.
Pain that occurs in the joints during movement after exercise, and then during prolonged use of the joint, indicates the most common rheumatic disease of the joints – osteoarthritis. It is a disease that gradually and secretly develops from middle age and usually manifests itself through complaints only in later years. It affects the hands, knees, or hips and leads to severe damage to these joints, making it difficult and impossible to move and work.
Osteoarthritis occurs as a result of damage to the joint cartilage. During joint use, damaged cartilage increases mechanical stress and bone damage. Over time, as the disease progresses, the joint thickens due to swelling of bone and soft tissues, and movements are increasingly limited.
In order to prevent the onset of osteoarthritis, we need moderate physical activity without excessive mechanical load on the joints, strong muscles and normal body weight are the best prevention for premature onset or accelerated development of osteoarthritis.
When talking about the treatment of osteoarthritis, it is crucial to familiarize the sufferer with the nature of the disease, as well as the changes in everyday life that can help in the treatment. Obese women have a four-fold higher risk, and obese men have a five-fold higher risk, of knee osteoarthritis compared to people of normal weight, so reducing excess body weight is an important measure of joint relief and osteoarthritis treatment.
A large number of medications are used in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Medicines that reduce pain in osteoarthritis are applied as needed, but they do not improve joint function or reduce stiffness and can have a number of side effects. In the treatment of osteoarthritis, drugs under the common name symptomatic slow-acting drugs for osteoarthritis (Symptomatic slow-acting drugs for OA – SYSADOA) are increasingly used.
So far, drugs containing the active components of Boswellia serrata, collagen, and hyaluronic acid have been shown to have very positive clinically proven results.
Boswellia’s active ingredients interfere with enzymes that cause joint swelling and inflammation, boswellic acid is the strongest inhibitor of 5-lipooxygenase, the enzyme responsible for inflammation. Which leads to a decrease in the number of leukotrienes – mediators of inflammation. Together with collagen, it affects better mobility and thus cartilage nutrition.
It is extremely important to choose the right, freeze-dried biological collagen.
Mr Pharm Brankica Milinković
