Mistake 1: Blindly taking herbal medicine In traditional Chinese medicine, people believe that “if it passes, it does not hurt, but if it hurts, it does not pass”. Osteoarthritis is often classified as a paralysis because of the pain in the joints. This kind of paralysis usually refers to the external environment, such as cold, damp and other causes of joint disease, so some people also think of it as “old cold leg”. Modern medicine, however, believes that the cause of osteoarthritis goes far beyond paralysis to damage to joint cartilage caused by a variety of factors. If this is not fully understood, blindly taking Chinese medicine can lead to serious adverse consequences. Some herbal medicines for rheumatism often have the effect of attacking poison with poison, which can damage liver and kidney function. Some patients have taken rattan plants to treat joint pain, resulting in acute kidney failure. Long-term blind treatment will also delay the disease, so that patients lose the best time for treatment. Mistake 2, blindly according to rheumatism treatment because many rheumatic diseases have joint pain, so patients often do not have a diagnosis before the subjective belief that as long as there is joint pain is rheumatic disease, according to rheumatic disease everywhere to seek medical treatment. Osteoarthritis is often treated according to rheumatoid arthritis. He was an elderly man from Sichuan who had pain in the small joints of both hands for decades, and the joints were gradually enlarged and deformed. He sought medical help everywhere and was treated for a long time for rheumatoid arthritis, to no avail. It turned out that the old man was a pickle factory worker, due to the low degree of mechanization of the factory, pickles need to be manually operated, so a few decades of work, eventually due to overwork caused joint wear. Later he checked the rheumatoid factor, which was negative; he also took X-rays of both hands, which were consistent with the changes of osteoarthritis, and was finally diagnosed with osteoarthritis. If this patient continues to be treated for rheumatoid arthritis, the disease will be added to the disease. Because the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is long-term, patients need to apply non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve pain, as well as drugs to control the disease. These drugs, in addition to the curative effect, there are many adverse reactions, such as the impact on the blood system, the liver, kidney toxic effects. Mistake 3: Blindly taking “softening bone spurs” drugs Many patients tend to seek medical help in order to relieve their pain, and look for drugs to eliminate bone spurs everywhere. As mentioned above, a bone spur is an enlarged bone, which is the result of the degeneration of joint cartilage, so it is also a bone. How can bones be eliminated by medication? There can be no such miracle drug in the world. Imagine if there was a drug that could dissolve bone, what serious adverse effects would this drug bring to the body? Therefore, it is completely misleading to believe that drugs can soften bone spurs. Mistake 4: Blindly supplementing trace elements (calcium, zinc, etc.) Supplementing trace elements can help, such as calcium for osteoporosis. However, the cause of osteoarthritis is not a deficiency of trace elements, so supplementation of trace elements has no direct therapeutic effect. Mistake 5: Long-term symptomatic treatment only Symptomatic treatment is needed to alleviate the pain. However, it is usually a temporary and short-term treatment, while many patients take non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs for long-term symptomatic treatment. These drugs are more familiar to patients with osteoarthritis and may be commonly chosen, such as anti-inflammatory pain, fotarolimus, ibuprofen, and fenpropathrin. While these drugs undoubtedly play a positive role in relieving the pain of the disease, they also have many adverse effects on the body. In summary, the positive and negative effects of these drugs on the disease are as follows: (1) They can reduce joint pain and relieve symptoms, but they cannot solve the underlying problem, i.e. they only treat the symptoms, not the root cause, because these drugs cannot control the development of the disease. Therefore, non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs should not be applied alone for a long time. (2) There are more drug side effects, such as liver and kidney function damage, gastrointestinal ulcer and bleeding, blood and nervous system effects and femoral head necrosis, etc. About 50% of patients with gastric or duodenal ulcers, bleeding or erosion induced by non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs have no symptoms, and even some elderly people have large ulcers in the digestive tract without any pain, and they do not go to the hospital until the digestive tract bleeds; some patients need dialysis treatment because of long-term use of non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs, which eventually leads to kidney failure; there are also patients who need dialysis treatment because of taking non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs that cause There are also cases of death due to brain hemorrhage as a result of a sharp drop in platelets caused by taking non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs. Therefore, these drugs must be used with caution. Osteoarthritis is not life-threatening, so don’t get killed by improper use of drugs. (3) Adverse effects on cartilage. Clinical studies have proven that non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs inhibit the synthesis of cartilage and can also directly destroy cartilage cells. The lesion of osteoarthritis is in the cartilage. If non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs are taken for a long time, they can have a destructive effect on joint cartilage, thus aggravating osteoarthritis. The longer the use of non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs and the higher the dose, the more serious the destruction of articular cartilage.