Alcohol: For the Rheumatoid Arthritis That Ails You

Posted on Jul 28, 2010

Flickr / Bernt Rostad

This could be a case in which the cure may cause problems above and beyond the severity of the symptoms, but a study that sounds like more fun than others we’ve heard of has found that alcohol consumption may help ease the pain caused by rheumatoid arthritis, as well as check the disease itself. However, the researchers behind these exciting findings sounded a requisite cautionary note while they were at it.  —KA

BBC:

Drinking alcohol can not only ease the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis it appears to reduce disease severity too, research suggests.

Scientists at the University of Sheffield asked two groups of patients with and without the disease to provide details of their drinking habits.

They found that patients who had drunk alcohol most frequently experienced less joint pain and swelling.

Experts say this should not be taken as a green light for drinking more.

Read more

More Below the Ad

New and Improved Comments

We are launching a major overhaul of our comments section.

In addition to more robust spam filtering and moderation, new features include the ability to rate other comments, sort how they are displayed and respond directly via e-mail or in a thread.

Unfortunately, commenters will lose their existing Truthdig identities. It's a pain, we know, but on the plus side you will now be able to log in with a plethora of options, including Google, Twitter, Facebook and Disqus accounts.

Before launching this system we spent months in discussion with our top commenters. We listened to the feedback and we hope you like what we've come up with.

Please direct any problems or concerns to us via our contact page.