A commonly known but serious joint problem is called arthritis. Arthritis is inflammation of one or more of your joints.
The main symptoms of arthritis are joint pains, inflammation of bones and stiffness, which usually gets worse as you get older. Whereas inflammation is a part of your healing process, when it mingles with arthritis it had adverse effects. Instead of helping to repair the body, inflammation causes the tissues in and around the affected joints to become damaged, causing pain, difficulty and swelling. Inflammation may also affect the tendons and ligaments surrounding the joint (this is known as enthesitis). Inflammation can damage the surface of the joint and sometimes the underlying bone. The most common types of arthritis are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis that are found in the majority of people suffering from arthritis
Osteoarthritis causes cartilage — the hard, slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones where they form a joint — to break down. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disorder that first targets the lining of joints (synovium). Arthritis is almost an incurable disease that can only forgo somewhat under surgery. So, the best treatment is to reduce it down and improve your quality of life at your early stages.
Symptoms of Arthritis:
Various types of arthritis, have a wide range of symptoms. Inflammatory arthritis’s symptoms are likely to be of having more swelling in your joints and dissimilarity in the level of pain, which does not happen to coordinate with the amount of your physical activity. More common symptoms consist, early morning joint stiffness, fatigue, an unwell feeling, weight loss, mild fevers and redness of skin. It is not necessary that these symptoms can only be regarded to arthritis.
Those who have a daily life routine with a lot of physical movement and activities, commonly are to experience aches or pains in muscles and joints from time to time. The dilemma is, how to differentiate the early signs of arthritis from the normal pain and stiffness you may get from other things? And what is the right time to go pay a visit to your doctor about these symptoms to find out?
It is common to feel sore and have your muscles be in pain if you do a lot of workout. If this kind of pain develops after overdoing a certain exercise or physical activity, then it is not something to worry about and the pain should ease within a few days. Although, you must look out to seek advice from your doctor if any of the symptoms below start occurring:
- The pain isn’t linked to an injury or persists for longer than a week.
- Your joint has become swollen, and isn’t linked to an injury.
- You also feel unwell or have a fever.
- You’re unable to do your everyday tasks due to joint or muscle pain.
- Your back hurts after lifting something heavy, and taking painkillers, applying heat and trying to stay active for a day or so hasn’t helped.
- You experience swelling, stiffness or a painful ‘squeeze’ in your joints.
- You see redness occur over your joints because of inflammation.
The earlier you get diagnosed the better the outcome, so don’t delay seeing your doctor if there’s no obvious reason for the pain.
Types of arthritis, including rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis, are long-term conditions, where the disease cannot be cured. The symptoms of these conditions tend to vary over time. The symptoms may go away for quite some time (reduction) and there may be periods where they become worse. These flashes may be related to something like a viral infection, but they can also happen for no apparent reason. The aim of treatment is to keep you in remission for as much of the time as possible, so you can live life as normally as possible, while minimizing any progression of the disease.