The latest weapon against aches and pain? Leeks . . .

I’VE had plenty of injuries in my time, including breaking my leg and falling off my bike, so I’m quite familiar with pain. I count my blessings that, unlike an estimated 30 million Britons, I’ve not had to endure chronic pain.

And, tragically, the pandemic is making things worse for them. A survey from Edinburgh University last week found that the number of NHS patients waiting for hip and knee replacements (usually for arthritis), with pain which they classified as ‘worse than death’, doubled over the past year.

What can be done? There’s now an understandable reluctance to prescribe powerful painkillers thanks to publicity about the over-use of opioids. Nor are these drugs particularly effective for chronic pain. What’s urgently needed are new ways of treating pain. This is where a non-surgical procedure called genicular artery embolization (GAE) comes in.

The idea is that rather than replace the knee joint, a doctor inserts a tube into the arteries that supply it, then squirts in tiny plastic particles.

When cartilage starts to break down, it releases enzymes that cause local inflammation and pain. The theory is that the plastic particles reduce blood flow to the lining of the knee, which reduces inflammation and pain.

A new study, from the University of California, Los Angeles, with 40 patients, found that within a week of having GAE, their average pain scores dropped from eight out of ten, to three — and patients who’d previously been unable to walk more than a few hundred yards could now walk several miles daily. A year later, 70 per cent still had massive reductions in their pain. Prevention is better than cure, so to help avoid arthritis — or reduce the pain — losing weight is key, reducing the load on the joint and inflammation. Simple, daily exercise can also help, building up the muscle to support the joint. Another step is a diet rich in prebiotics, found in onions, garlic and leeks, which are converted by the ‘good’ bacteria in the gut into anti-inflammatory chemicals. Studies with mice have shown prebiotics can prevent arthritis, even in severely overweight animals, and human studies are under way.