More about Sesame

Eating Sesame Seeds Superior To Tylenol for Knee Arthritis

Posted: 12 Nov 2013 12:36 AM PST

A remarkable new study published in the International Journal of Rheumatic Diseases confirms that food is not only medicine, but sometimes superior to it. Medical researchers working out of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, Tabriz, Iran, sought to investigate the effects of sesame seed supplementation on clinical signs and symptoms in patients with knee osteoarthritis.[i]

Knee osteoarthritis is a form of degenerative joint disease or degenerative arthritis localized in the knee, and causes a variety of symptoms including pain, swelling, abnormal bone growth (which can result in bone spurs), disfigured cartilage and loss of motion, and it affects as many as 12.1% of adults aged 60+, according to the CDC.[ii] Standard therapy involves the use of NSAID drugs, many of which have been linked both to internal bleeding and significantly increased risk of cardiac mortality, which is why the researchers sought out to look for "a complementary treatment to reduce complications and costs."

The study took fifty patients with osteoarthritis of the knee, and divided them into two 25-patient groups: a sesame group, receiving 40 grams/day of powdered sesame seeds, and a standard drug therapy group, receiving two 500 mg doses of Tylenol twice a day along with 500 mg of glucosamine once daily. After two months of treatment, 22 patients in the sesame intervention group and 23 patients in the control group completed the study.
Read more »