Treatment Of Rheumatism - Warmth |
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Warmth, too, is comforting in rheumatism. I have mentioned earlier the benefit of general warmth. Athletes perform better when they are warm; those with rheumatism get even more benefit. Your attack of rheumatism will be made tolerable, and may even be cut short, if you keep warm. Warm rooms are admittedly more expensive but they are preferable to heavy clothes for this purpose.
More important than general warmth in an attack of rheumatism is warmth of the parts affected. This may be achieved in a variety of ways. In the ordinary house there is nothing to beat a hot water bottle for general effectiveness. It can be applied anywhere with a little ingenuity; on the back and neck it can be propped in place by the chair or a pillow; on the shoulders, knees, feet and hands it is best only half full, so that it can be wrapped round the place that aches: the one precaution that is important is that it should be well padded; many is that patient I have seen with a burn the shape of hot water bottle.
There are other methods of applying heat to the site of your rheumatism. Radiant heat can come from a fire, whether coal, gas or electric, and this is very satisfactory for warming any part of the back. Radiant heat can also be supplied by a heater designed for the purpose: there is nothing special about the heat from one of these 'heat lamps'; it is just that they are convenient for applying heat to parts of the body that cannot be reached by an ordinary fire. These sources of heat, by the way, have nothing to do with ultra-violent lamps, which have no place in the treatment of rheumatism. You may have heard of the benefits of shortwave diathermy; except for trouble in the hip and deep in the back this is little better than other means of applying heat though it is more elegant and expensive; in any case it is only safe in the hands of experts.
Hands and feet can be warmed effectively in wax, after instruction on how to use it. The wax used for this purpose can be heated and used at home but you run less risk of ending with a disastrous sticky mess if you used hot water but you run less risk of ending with a disastrous sticky mess if you use hot water instead. You can have the water hotter, to good advantage, if you wear thick rubber gloves on your hands or, if it is your feet that you are heating, put several thick plastic bags on them.
There are, then, four main lines of treatment for an attack of rheumatism which is not bad enough to put you to bed. They are rest for the part that aches, warmth both general and local, drugs to relieve pain and lastly, though not always helpful, massage. These may be supplemented by some of the following measures. |
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