Copper Bracelets and Rheumatoid Arthritis

First of all, these bracelets just never made logical sense to me. I haven't been able to wear a watch since my mickey mouse watch with soft leather started hurting my wrist when I was about 16. And people want me to put a heavy metal bracelet on my wrist? NO THANKS!

Nonetheless, as I've said here before, we are in pain, and we are desperate for relief, so I can see why some people might try them to see if they work. Any miracle will do, right?

The good news is that when I did a search for copper bracelets and rheumatoid arthritis, most of the links I found said that it was a myth, that the bracelets do NOT cure RA.

The bad news is that there are still a lot of people who assert that they help with the pain, and even remove all symptoms of RA. I still see RA patients asking about them. One of the sites says that a study said that they help, and they cite a study done in 1976. But for some reason, no one has been able to duplicate this study. This site also tries to say that the meds that actually have been proven to help with RA and dangerous and unneeded. Some sites even claim that using copper bracelets result in the patient being SYMPTOM FREE for long periods of time. Of course, those sites sell very expensive versions of the bracelets, no surprise.

So, besides the lack of a Nobel Prize being awarded to anyone for curing RA and the fact that I've never heard of a real medical doctor prescribing copper bracelets for RA pain, what evidence is there that these things don't work?

There's the 1976 study, and then there's a more recent study that was done in the UK. However, the one done in the UK only used a few subjects and was focused on folks with OA, which is a totally different animal than RA. And, well, if you read the one from the 70s, you'll see that it was a "psychological" study which is very vague and seemed to mainly focus on whether or not the body actually absorbed the copper, by weighing the bracelets after they'd been sweated upon. The best article I've found about this 70s study is this one.

The bottom line is that there have been no studies which have actually proven that copper ingested or absorbed in any way has curative properties, or even that it actually relieves pain.

Besides the green stains, though, there are no side effects of wearing these bracelets, and some of them are very stylish! However, if one is a believer in copper for relieving pain, she can get a free bracelet by stripping electrical wires and wearing those on any part of her body, by taking multi-vitamins with copper in them, by carrying around a pocketful of pre-1982 pennies. Or she could maybe even get some in her diet by eating oysters and other shellfish (YUM!), whole grains, beans, nuts, potatoes, and organ meats (kidneys, liver), dark leafy greens, dried fruits such as prunes, cocoa, black pepper, and yeast.

However, there is some harm in wearing the bracelets, if someone believes it is a cure for RA:

* False hope which could prevent someone from getting proper medical treatment, which could lead to a lot of damage that could affect someone for the rest of his or her life.


* Spending money which could be better used toward real medicines for the disease, or for research, or you know, just take yourself to a nice dinner, in which you'll get all the copper you'll need.

* Magical thinking, which is similar to false hope, but which places the blame of the "cure" not working on the patient.