Welcome to part 2 of natural arthritis pain relief, management and treatment.

Arthritis can be very painful and debilitating for the sufferer, affecting both mental and physical health, as well as day to day activities and relationships. We hope you find these suggestions useful for improving your wellbeing, reducing your pain, slowing the condition degeneration and managing your condition.

Stress is found to increase inflammation markers and reduce anti-inflammatory mediators in those with arthritis (20). Current stress levels are also found to have a direct relationship to the current disease activity in RA, showing that more experienced stress, exacerbates the condition and in turn, reductions in stress directly correlate to a reduction in arthritis symptoms (21).

Heightened stress is also found to increase feelings of arthritis pain (22) and the adrenalin released during a stress response has been found to make people hypersensitive to pain, increasing the pain again, experienced by the sufferer (23). So lowering stress is an important step to lowering the suffering from arthritis, personally and physically.

I would suggest taking a three phased approach to addressing your stress; incorporating enjoyable self care activities into your routine and lifestyle; adding in routine methods that are scientifically proven to calm the nervous system; and taking some time to identify what your personal stressors are and considering if you can make some lifestyle adaptions to make these more manageable. The first and third methods will be deeply personal to you, so I would encourage you to do this work.

The second aspect I would encourage you to consider clinically supported avenues such as taking up gentle exercise, diaphragmatic breathing exercise and meditation. Studies have found that practicing these avenues and developing their mindfulness effects, can be very beneficial to reducing stress, feelings of anxiety and depression (24, 25, 26). Meditation has also been found to actually change the brains neurological response to pain, as well as sufferers reporting experiencing less pain (27), making it an exceptional tool to utilise. For best results, these methodologies should be incorporated into your daily life to consistently help you manage stress and reduce your pain and subsequent inflammation.

Poor quality and short durations of sleep are factors that increases the mediators of inflammation (28). It has been found that each additional hour of sleep, over 7.6 hours, leads to a an up to 8% increase in anti-inflammatory markers, whilst each hour lost leads to an 8% increase in pro-inflammation markers (29). Likewise, disrupted sleep can cause a significant increase in the inflammation markers (30), so addressing sleep quality and duration is essential for improving arthritis.

The difficulty is, 54% of arthritis sufferers report poorer sleep due to the condition (37) and also find their arthritis symptoms, pain and mood worsen with poor sleep (31). This creates a vicious cycle of of pain and increases in inflammation.

Improving your general arthritis symptoms with the help of these other steps, should have a knock on effect of improving your quality of sleep and vice versa in this reciprocal relationship. Likewise, by taking part in exercise, reducing your stress and meditating, as in the discussions above, these are independently found to improve sleep quality (32, 33, 34). Stress meditating

Focusing on improving sleep specifically, there are many things that can help. Improving your sleep environment with supportive bedding, a blackened room, reducing noise and strategic pillow support placement, can help make you more comfortable and sleep deeper. Likewise developing an effective sleep hygiene routine by going to bed at the same time, developing a relaxing wind down process, avoiding devices with stimulating blue light for an hour before bed, avoiding caffeine from the afternoon and spending the evening in a darkened environment to stimulate your sleep hormone melatonin, are all found to help. Melatonin is also developed from sun exposure, so gaining your adequate vitamin D rays support sleep depth and duration. Finally heat treatment and using KYMIRA infrared, can also improve your sleep quality, please continue for these below.

Heating and cooling sore joints can help to relieve the painful symptoms and the inflammation in arthritis (35). Cold treatments such as applying gel ice packs, can be effective as part of treatment for reducing swelling and inflammation. Sufferers report applying heat to be very soothing for the pain and relaxing to the muscles around affected joints, that in turn help them to relax.

Heat can be applied by taking a hot shower or bath, applying topical heat packs and using products such as capsaicin based heating creams. Capsaicin is a hot child pepper that warms on the skin when applied. Usefully it is also found to be regionally pain reducing by stimulating the bodies nerve endings, as pain and temperature are felt along the same neural pathways. Some sufferers find using electric heated blankets useful, throughout the night, finding it helps them get to sleep easier and that the heat reduces waking stiffness.

KYMIRA infrared clothing can be used to both manage the symptoms and treat and reduce the causes of arthritis.

The infrared offers natural pain relief benefits. The Nitric Oxide produced with the support of KYMIRA products, has a direct relationship with reducing pain levels. Nitric Oxide activates a chemical called Cyclic Guanosine Monophosphate, also called cGMP, which is the same chemical activated when we take an opiate painkiller. Although the effect off KYMIRA will not be as potent as taking an opiate, the products are clinically proven to significantly reduce pain levels without the side effects or addictive risks associated.

Due to the vasodilating effects of the Nitric Oxide, KYMIRA products support a reduction in inflammation by opening up the blood vessels and increasing the blood flow. In doing so the body can more efficiently remove excess fluids from the site of the inflammation. The infrared waves penetrate 4cm deep and in a peripheral shape, offering effective treatment to affected joints.

It is found that arthritis sufferers can be temperature sensitive (36), with their arthritis affected by weather and temperature changes, particularly the cold. KYMIRA products aid the body’s ability to regulate it’s internal temperature, due to the increase in circulation, tissue oxygen levels and cell energy. The KYMIRA fabrics themselves offer exceptional warming properties, warming up quicker and then storing the thermal energy 63% longer than an equivalent weight fabric would in clinical trials. The muscle relaxation effect of the infrared compliments too, easing tension and making you feel more comfortable.

As KYMIRA is pain reliving it can be an excellent support to help you begin and maintain an arthritis suitable exercise regime, as discussed in part 1 of the blog. It is also ideal to wear during sleep, with the additional support of the thermoregulating benefits to help you maintain the ideal sleeping temperature. Furthermore, KYMIRA infrared clothing has been found to improve sleep quality by 15.9%, which correlated to a 15.8% improvement in feelings of fatigue and a 13.6% reduction in soreness. Wearers report the fall asleep faster, have less nighttime awakenings and wake up feeling more rejuvenated.

KYMIRA products are FDA certified as a medical device and the ranges can be viewed here: Men’s - Women’s.

If you have any questions or feedback, please leave us a comment or get in touch.