Arthritis is the general term that refers to an inflammation of joints which brings limited motion, stiffness, swelling and pain. There are more than one hundred kinds of arthritis.
The one responsible for smooth movement is the cartilage which is the one that protects the joints. It is also the cartilage which is the shock absorber whenever pressure is placed in the joint. If the cartilage breaks down then it now cause stiffness, swelling and pain. Arthritis is often involved with breakdown of cartilage.
You may have arthritis because of the following – infection that is cause by virus or bacteria, the normal tear and wear on joints, broken bone or fracture and autoimmune disease. Most of the time when the infection has cleared, disease is cured or the injury is healed, the inflammation also disappear.
Unfortunately in some conditions and injuries, the inflammation does not easily go away thus resulting to a long period of pain and deformity. If this is the case then you have a chronic arthritis. As mentioned above, there are over a hundred kind of arthritis but the most common of all is Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid Arthritis and Gout. Other kinds of arthritis may include Ankylosing spondylitis, Juvenile Rheumatoid Arthritis, Psoriatic arthritis, Reactive Arthritis, Viral Arthritis just to mention a few.
Arthritis symptoms include a feeling of warmth around the joint, stiffness especially early in the morning the moment you wake up, the skin around the joint is red, limited movement in the joint, swelling in the joint and joint pain.
Arthritis treatment varies and it often depends on the severity of the condition, if it affects your day to day activities, cause of arthritis and which joints are affected. Additional factors to consider are your occupation and your age. These factors are considered by your doctor when making a treatment plan. If it is possible treatment is focus on the cure however we know that there are arthritis that is not curable like rheumatoid arthritis and osteoarthritis. In this case treatment is focus in managing the pain and discomfort.
There are various forms of treatment method which will fall in the non-surgical and surgical category. Most doctors do recommend the non-surgical method which most often includes medications to manage the pain and inflammation, physical therapy, massage, chiropractic, spinal decompression therapy just to mention a few. If all non-invasive treatments fail then surgery might be necessary.
But as always prevention is always better than cure. So how to prevent arthritis? Early diagnosis of such condition can prevent damage in the joint. Also avoid injuring your joints over and over again to prevent arthritis from occurring. Excess weight is also a contributing factor of having arthritis thus it is important to maintain a healthy weight always.
Also Vitamin D may help prevent Arthritis. A new research comes out saying that Vitamin D helps in protecting elder women from Rheumatoid Arthritis.
The latest research study data was from Iowa Women’s Health Study which involves around 30,000 women, ages 55 to 69.During the course of study it was found out that women whose diets are high with Vitamin D has the lowest occurrence of rheumatoid arthritis. While those who only gets 200 IU of Vitamin D in their diets has the rate of 33% of getting rheumatoid arthritis shared by Kenneth G Saag. A professor of medicine in the University of Alabama, Birmingham. All this result is reported in the journal Arthritis and Rheumatism. (Kenneth G. Saag, MD, Arthritis and Rheumatism, January 2004; vol. 50: pp. 72-77)
Another sure way to prevent arthritis which is quite simple is water. Pain is the body’s signal that it needs water. It means water deficiency in the body. Cartilage in the body is mostly compose of water, in fact around 85% of it is water so that if this is dehydrated then a damage in the cartilage is most likely to happen. The same thing happens with the disc. This is according to F. Batmanghelidj M.D. of Anti cancer Research (Pain: A Need for Paradigm Change, Sept.-Oct. 1987Vol. 7, PP. 971-990,)
It is indeed much better to be aware and prevent such conditions to occur by observing the preventions discussed above.