The Meaning of Arthritis

Joint inflammation is what arthritis means. Arthritis encompasses a wide variety of diseases and is not a single disease.

There are more than 100 rheumatic diseases and other conditions, that can cause pain, stiffness in the body and also swelling of the joints.

The time that joints are starting to get damaged is when it is said that you have arthritis. Most of us realize that this condition affects the older population. Each of the different forms of arthritis all have there own cause.

What do they have in common, 100 different diseases

We have a hundred different forms of arthritis, so what is common with all of them? The answer to this question is without a doubt pain. The arthritis pain will be different among all of the individuals suffering from arthritis, and the location of the pain will also be different.

What are some of the warning signs for arthritis?

Swelling of your joints and stiffness are some of the signs and symptoms that you may be suffering from arthritis.

Pain, swelling and stiffness in moving one or more of your joints may be a sign that you are starting to suffer from arthritis. If you are having these problems for two weeks or longer, then you need to visit your doctor immediately and have these symptoms checked out and treated. You don’t want to let this go with out doing anything.

Listing all the different types of arthritis would become quite extensive and I am not about to do that here. I will do another article explaining them, but for now here is a list of some of the most common types and the symptoms that are associated with each type of arthritis.

Osteoarthritis - this disease happens to be a degenerative joint disease. You are going to feel the worst pain at night time or after rest. This happens from wear and tear on the body, but there are other reasons. Here are some symptoms of osteo arthritis:

pain tenderness swelling decreased function

The onset of osteo arthritis is very subtle and gradual, usually involving one or only a few joints. Some of the joints most affected by this are:

spine area your hands hips become sore hard on the knees

Rheumatoid - you are going to feel the most pain during the morning. If this happens in children and/or the elderly then the pain may not be as pronounced. Now sometimes there are going to be cases when certain limbs don’t want to function.

Rhuematoid arthritis can be a potentially disabling disease. The body is attacking isself. This is how Rhuematoid arthritis is an auto immune disease. Problems can be:

stiffness joint pain swelling loss of joint function

The cause of rheumatoid arthritis remains elusive. Doctors believe that there could be something genetic involved with this. Rheumatoid arthritis in the beginning stages can be difficult to diagnose because again this is gradual and has subtle symptoms.

There are many different types of arthritis and I am going to list some of them now. There is rheumatoid, osteoarthritis, gout and pseudogout, septic, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and many more.

The advances in medicine today have made treating the different types of arthritis many. You can use medicine prescribed by your doctor or even over the counter drugs and also arthroplasty and this is only a couple of ways to treat arthritis symptoms.

As a last resort and when the pain becomes so severe that prosthetic joint replacement may be the answer to the problem. Other treatments have failed and surgery is now necessary. Patient’s are quite satisfied of the results of joint replacement. I know of a friend who had a new hip put in and he is back out playing golf like nothing happened to him. You would never know he had this done and he is so grateful that he did.

You have to understand that arthritis has been around for a long time. Arthritis dates back to 4500 B.C.. It was then the first traces were noticed in humans.

It was noticed that the Native American’s of Tennessee had arthritis. In fact ankle osteo arthritis was noticed in dinosaur remains.

Today all we can do is to treat the pain and stiffness that is associated with the symptoms of arthritis. Maybe in the future as studies continue on this disease, a cure may come. But for now all we can do is to treat the symptoms.

There are other methods to help arthritis sufferers. I only mentioned a couple in this article. I will detail other methods in a future article.