I had my right thumb in your situation: three cortisone injections, then joint surgery May 2011. I am also an artist and have been quite concerned about this. The surgery kicked off Dup's and I had 8 nodules and 4 cords within 8 weeks of surgery! Didn't even know I had it until then. My surgeon said "wait and see", I said "I've seen enough" and did my homework. Went to the Hamburg clinic Sept.. Prof. Seegenschmidt treated Dup's with R/T. My left thumb is a candidate for the surgery now and shows very beginning Dup's already, but was not treated with R/T. The Prof. said he treats arthritis with R/T as well but in a different way than for Dup's.. Plan to return to Hamburg in Dec. and would like to find info on R/T for arthritis. Anyone out there have references about R/T for OA?

Acupuncture is fine for relief of pain but it is not going to treat the underlying disease mechanism which is an autoimmune reaction by your body that is often triggered by stress, physical and emotional. Dr. Stanley Jacobs at the University of Oregon has been successfully treating people with arthritis for decades. He treated my wife in the mid 1980's after she wasted months with the "experts" at Stanford Medical. The only outcome of the treatment by the doctors at Stanford was a toxic overdosing with the aspirin they proscribed that was 8x the maximum recommended dosage.

His treatment involved the use of DMSO which is a substance that is great at removing waste products from the cells of the body and in stress counseling. In the case of my wife, she had a trigger and would first experience pressure and pain in one eye. From that point onward the condition would get worse until she would be walking around on crutches (prior to the treatment) for months. She learned that when she experienced that pain she needed to take things off her plate at work and at home and take it easy until the episode ended. It kept her from progressing to the next stage.

In her case she flew up to see the doctor at his clinic and received injections of the DMSO for a week. She flew up needing crutches and in great pain and when she returned the pain was gone as were the crutches. She continued with topical treatment with the DMSO.

Dr. Jacobs sells a hand lotion with urea and DMSO for the treatment of Dupytren's which I use figuring that it might help and can't hurt. But the stress aspect is the most important to consider. Most of the people I know with severe arthritis are leading unusually stressful lives but only treat the arthritis and not the stress. They will pay for gold treatments and acupuncture and take medications with side effects but are reluctant to pay for a massage or a weekend at a spa that might do them a lot more good in both the short and long run.