Arthritis Today Magazine

I have arthritis of the jaw. While painful at times, it doesn't come with the same types of mobility issues inherent with arthritis in other joints. However, I have a lot of other joint problems, particularly with my ankles and knees, so I thought Arthritis Today might still be useful in helping live with the pain and swelling. It was, but not as much as expected.

There are two major reasons why Arthritis Today isn't the world's most helpful magazine for people with joint pain. The first is the surprising decision to focus more on general health issues than issues specific to arthritis or orthopedic problems. The second is an overwhelming influx of advertising. The latter is exacerbated by a design scheme and format that makes much of the content indistinguishable from the ads.

In fact, Arthritis Today has so many ads that even the Table of Contents in each issue is split into two parts with a full page ad between them. Full page ads are the norm rather than the exception, and while they're often more on-topic than the articles themselves, they fill so much of the magazine that hunting for actual editorial content can take on the feel of a scavenger hunt at times.

In between the advertising, each issue of Arthritis Today contains three major sections: Your Health, Your Self, and Your Life. The specific contents of each section vary from one issue to the next, but they generally fall within a few standard subsections. Your Health usually includes a Medwatch section with short articles on general health. Your Self is generally split into Balance, Nutrition, and Fitness areas dealing with food, exercise, stress, and lifestyle issues that might affect your health. Your Life is the shortest area of the magazine and has Your Foundation and Solutions sections. The former highlights health-related organizations and resources; the latter is composed mostly of glorified ads or some more basic lifestyle advice.

Most of the content in these sections consists of single page short wrapup articles or brief announcements or proclamations of Things That Would Be Good For You. The length and style of these really are more appropriate for advertisements than content, hence the great difficulty in figuring out where the ads end and the articles start. In addition, there are generally two to four longer articles slotted somewhere within the three major sections. These longer articles are sometimes a bit more directly related to joint issues, but not always. They also tend to have a lot of filler and tons of sidebars, making them look longer than they would in a more traditional magazine structure.

There are perhaps one or two articles in each issue I've read that I've found helpful for pain management or joint problems and another couple of interesting more general tidbits buried among the various sections. More often than not there are a couple of useful nutrition tips for folks looking to eat healthier food. When it is on topic, Arthritis Today is very big on homeopathic and non-traditional treatments, so if you're violently opposed to learning about these sorts of things, you may find even less of the content interests you.

The magazine presents a lot of reader letters and Q&A sections. Here too anything remotely health related is fair game; it's not uncommon to see folks ask questions about surgery or skin problems or respiratory concerns. Arthritis Today really is a general health and wellness magazine masquerading as a specialty magazine aimed at folks with arthritis.

If you have a discerning eye, this magazine might be worth skimming to spot the one or two articles actually of interest, but its lack of focus, the difficulty of separating ads from content, and the sheer number of ads really hamper Arthritis Today. Reading it requires a lot of effort for a very small return.