A review of therapeutic protocols of Cold Arthralgia in Iranian traditional medicine

Introduction: Musculoskeletal symptoms include more than 20% of all outpatient visits in the US. 22% (46 million people) of US population suffer from an arthritis which is diagnosed by a physician and 19 million of them have significant functional restriction. In Iranian Traditional Medicine (ITM), "Vaja e mafasel" means arthralgia (feeling of pain in joints). The cornerstone of treatment in ITM is to remove the cause and in addition to various medications, nutritional and lifestyle instructions play a major role as well. Regarding the high prevalence of arthralgia and resultant disability, we tried to collect the therapeutic strategies from ITM references in this manuscript. Method: This is a review library study which is prepared using "Tebe Noor library" software from main ITM text books (from 2 nd to 4 th AH). Results: As a whole, treatment of arthralgia includes removing the cause and also the humors if present, Temperamental remodeling and Organ reinforcement (the last is to prevent the relapse). In this manuscript we state the treatments in four major groups including: Lifestyle, Nutritional instructions (advices and regimens), Medications (oral and local), Manual operations. Discussion & Conclusion: One of the most important causes of arthralgia is wrong lifestyle. Therefore prevention could be achieved by correcting the lifestyle. Many of mentioned instructions in this manuscript are alterations in lifestyle and so are easy to follow (just by informing and cultural corrections). Majority of treatments are not difficult or expensive with no side effects; therefore can decrease use of chemical drugs with their obvious more side effects.