Joint Pain

How can Natural Medicine Help?

Naturopathic Doctors can help evaluate, diagnose and treat you joint pain. Our expertise in anatomy and orthopaedics helps us assess your joints and with the help of imaging, diagnose your pain. We will also evaluate your diet and lifestyle for any extraneous producers of inflammation that may be inhibiting you. There may also be nutritional supplements or herbal medicine that can further decrease inflammation and support healing.

After these basic supports are in place, we will also evaluate you for the appropriateness of treatment with acupuncture or injection therapies.

Diet & Lifestyle

What you are eating could be impacting your pain levels and recovery time. There are many different, commonly eaten foods that have been identified as inflammatory, and consuming them on a regular basis will cause in increase in tissue damage and joint pain.

Aside from inflammatory foods, it is also critically important that your body is getting plenty of macro and micronutrients to support healing. Naturopathic Doctors are experts in diet and nutrition, and can help tailor your diet to support optimal healing.

Nutritional Supplements & Herbal Medicine

Diet isn’t always enough to manage inflammation and encourage adequate healing, at times additional supports are needed. Both nutritional supplements and herbal medicines can be very effective at managing pain, decreasing inflammation and decreasing recovery times. In some cases, these natural remedies may limit or replace the pharmaceutical pain medications that you have been relying on.

Acupuncture

Traditional Chinese Medicine is an ancient form of medicine that speaks primarily to the flow of energy, creating a delicate balance between organs. Acupuncture promotes your body’s natural ability to heal, by enhancing recuperative power, increasing immunity, decreasing stress and calming the mind. This method of treatment supports both physical and emotional well being, treating the whole person every step of the way.

Western physiology shows that acupuncture stimulates natural endorphins, which leads to a decrease in pain. This therapy is very effective in the treatment of sports injuries, back pain and any sore muscles. We incorporate the use of traditional acupuncture with modern techniques in Intramuscular Stimulation to decrease pain, induce muscle relaxation and decrease stress.

Custom Compounded Pain Relief Creams

Oral pain medications carry a host of unwanted side effects, including stomach ulcers, intestinal bleeding, increased risk of heart attack or stroke, liver damage, and addictive potential. They may even be contraindicated completely for people with existing medical conditions. Fortunately, we can bypass these side effects by using topical preparations of the same pain medications. This way we deliver the medicine directly to the site of pain and are able to use much lower doses. With the help of local, friendly compounding pharmacists, we are also able to combine several different pain medicines in the same topical cream, so you don’t have to take multiple pills throughout the day. Ask us if topical compounded options for pain are right for you!

Regenerative Injection Therapies

Regenerative injections therapies (RIT) are treatments used to alleviate acute or chronic pain resulting from joint, muscle, tendon, ligament and/or cartilage injuries. The injections are composed of different natural substances, depending on your specific needs and are administered directly to the joint, where healing is needed. These injection techniques can help your body regenerate joints and get you back to your life and activities faster.

Read more about Regenerative Injection Therapies