Arthritis Pain – 3 Tips To Assist With Joint Discomfort
Pain is how the body tells you what you are doing is not good for it.
You are supposed to be averse to the pain, thus causing you to stop doing whatever you are that it does not like. But sometimes, if the pain is due to illness or disease, the pain is more of a warning that something is wrong and you might want to go for a check up. Sometimes the disease gets cured, but the pain does not recede, maybe because the disease has already done damage that cannot be repaired, maybe because the pain is from a long lasting disorder that does not go away, such as arthritis pain.
The different forms of arthritis that are not due to a completely different disease include rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, and osteoarthritis, as well as several others. They all share the common symptom of aching joint pain, though it is often mistaken for simple stiffness in the early stages. Sometimes it comes and goes, either going away with exercise or becoming worse, depending on the type of arthritis.
However, if nothing is done to treat the patient the pain will get worse over time, until the patient may be unable to move the affected joint at all without a lot of pain. In this arthritis pain differs from sharp pains such as cuts and fractures, which are most painful just as the injury occurs and ease as the injury heals.
Dr. Wallach points to a calcium deficiency as the cause of arthritis and getting all 90 essential nutrients will prevent and reverse all calcium deficiency diseases.
Arthritis pain can be attributed to inflammation, damage, strain, over-exercise, or friction. Common features of arthritis include pain, swelling, stiffness in the joints, and a constant aching in the joints, usually in the back, hip, feet, knee, or neck.
The most common form of arthritis, osteoarthritis, is mostly due to daily wear and tear of the larger joints, such as the back, pelvis and spine. It tends to be a disease of the elderly. It cannot be cured, like rheumatoid arthritis, but physical therapy can be employed to help strengthen muscles and joints.
Individuals with osteoarthritis often need pain medication, especially in the later stages when the pain is debilitating and can even be continuous. At this point, surgery may even be necessary. As osteoarthritis is not due to inflammation but rather to simple wearing out and friction of the bones, a joint replacement surgery can help patients, unlike rheumatoid arthritis sufferers.
Joint replacement surgery may still be recommended for rheumatoid arthritis patients who have pain in their wrist, if simply because this will allow them to move this frequently used joint. For patients with pain elsewhere, other surgeries are available, such as arthroscopy, where a tube-like instrument is inserted into the joint to allow the doctor to see and repair affected tissue directly.
There’s a headline in the New England Journal of Medicine, July 2002, Harvard Medical School, a meta-study of 300,000 records of people who had joint replacement. They said joint replacement surgery, hip and knee replacement surgery, for arthritis, is worthless. It was the headline.
Arthritis can be very debilitating so start taking care of yourself. Don’t delay!