If you or a loved one suffers from arthritis, you'll know all too well how the winter season can worsen stiff and aching joints. So this winter I bring you glad tidings of a herbal remedy which is helping thousands of arthritis sufferers and is now available in the UK. LitoZin, derived from rose-hips, has been found in trials to alleviate symptoms of arthritis - pain, disability and stiffness - and reduce the consumption of painkillers like ibuprofen or paracetamol. Research also shows that as a natural, herbal remedy it is safe - excellent news for the millions of sufferers who have been searching for an alternative treatment following the safety scandal over the pain reliever Vioxx.

The healing properties of rose-hip were discovered in the 1980s by farmer and grandfather Erik Hansen when he himself was suffering from arthritis in his shoulders. He found that by regularly eating wild rose-hip jam - a local folk medicine - his shoulder joints began to improve. He therefore decided to make a more concentrated version of the remedy by growing rose-hips himself and drying and grinding them into a powder. Within a month of taking the powder, his pain disappeared. Hansen told a doctor about his discovery who contacted the Copenhagen University Department of Clinical Microbiology where the active galactolipid compound (GOPO) in the rose-hip powder was identified.

GOPO content varies considerably between different species of rose-hip, but through years of research, a unique sub-species of the rose-hip plant with the highest GOPO content has been produced. Wild rose-hip powder - under the name of LitoZin - has been commercially available in Scandinavian countries for two years. In Sweden, where glucosamine is available on prescription, and therefore free to users, 50-60,000 bottles of LitoZin are sold each month - meaning that users are choosing to use a product they have to pay for over the free one due to its effectiveness. A number of studies also back this up.

The most recent study to date found that LitoZin resulted in a significant reduction in pain after just three weeks of treatment. Danish researchers selected 94 patients with osteoarthritis of the hip or knee and gave 47 of them 5g a day of a herbal supplement made from a subspecies of rose-hip for a period of three months. The remaining patients were given a similar amount of placebo. The two groups then swapped treatments for another three month period. After the initial three weeks of treatment, the percentage of patients experiencing a reduction of pain was significantly higher for those taking the rose-hip supplement (82 per cent) than for those taking placebo (49 per cent).

These results show that LitoZin is even more effective than glucosamine - another arthritis remedy - which has been found to be effective in 40 per cent of study participants. However, research shows that LitoZin works in a completely different way to Glucosamine. Where glucosamine helps to repair damaged or eroded joint cartilage , LitoZin appears to have an anti-inflammatory effect by reducing the migration of white blood cells involved in the inflammation and tissue damage associated with osteoarthritis.

Therefore, to help relieve pain and stiffness this winter, I recommend that arthritis sufferers take 5g a day of Litozin combined with a joint support complex containing at least 1000mg glucosamine. On top of this, take a good quality multivitamin and mineral, along with a daily supplement of 1000mg of EPA/DHA fish oil or cod liver oil and an antioxidant complex which helps to reduce inflammation associated with arthritis.