Many Different Diseases All Called Arthritis

Posted by Alan Beartoes

The Meaning of Arthritis

The meaning of arthritis is joint inflammation. What a lot of people don’t understand is that arthritis is not just one disease but a wide variety of diseases

Today there are many rheumatic diseases and other conditions that are called arthritis. In fact there are over a 100 and all of them will cause pain, stiffness and swelling of the joints.

Some of these conditions will actually damaged the joints of the body. When this happens this is often referred to as arthritis. This happens to be the leading cause for disability of our elderly population, as well as those of age 65 and greater. Now with arthritis, there are many different forms and each of these forms will have its own cause.

What is the common theme of arthritis?

What you are going to find that all the different forms of arthritis have in common is that pain is the number one answer. This pain is going to be located in different areas as well as feeling different to all of the individuals.

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.

Are you feeling stiffness and swelling in one or more of your joints and have you been feeling this for a couple weeks or more? If you answered yes to the above then you need to visit your physician and have these warning signs diagnosed and treated.

There are so many different types of arthritis, and I am not going to list all of them here. This would become quite a long article. What I am going to do is to list a few with the symptoms that go along with each.

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

When you are suffering from osteo arthritis, to tell initially may be tough. The onset is subtle and a gradual type thing. This is going to be one joint or several joints that can become affected and those joints may be the following:

spine area your hands hips become sore hard on the knees

Rheumatoid - most often the pain is felt in the morning. When in the elderly and children some of the limbs may refuse to function and the pain may not be as pronounced.

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:

Some of these symptoms are similar to other types of arthritis. you can have stiffness pain in the affected joint swelling of the joint you can lose function of the joint

Rheumatoid arthritis remains a mystery to doctor’s on why it occurs. Some believe that it is genetic. When it is first starting out, it can be tough to tell if a person is suffering from this disease since it happens so slow at first.

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.

4500 B.C. where when the first signs of arthritis were seen. So as you can see this disease has been around for a very long time.

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 treatments besides the couple listed above and I will talk about them in another article.

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