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What does arthritis mean?

Arthritis literally means joint inflammation. You also have to understand that arthritis is not a single disease. Arthritis refers to an entire group 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.

When one of these conditions damages the joints of the body this is when it is referred to as arthritis. Arthritis effect and disables our seniors and people 65 and older. There are many different forms of arthritis and they each have there own cause.

What is the common theme of arthritis?

The 100 forms of arthritis do have something very much in common. Pain is common, far and away the number one answer. This pain is going to be different for each of the sufferers and where the pain is located is also going to be different.

What are some of the warning signs for arthritis?

One main sign other than pain is the stiffness, swelling in moving your joints

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.

I am not going to go into all of the different types of arthritis and their symptoms. What I am going to do is list a few for you, and I will do another article that will list many others. So here are a few types of arthritis and the symptoms that are associated with them.

Osteo arthritis - this is really a degenerative joint disease and most of the time the pain is worse at night or after resting. Usually this occurs due to wear and tear on the body. Symptoms of Osteo arthritis can be:

tenderness decreased function of the joint pain in affected joint swelling

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:

tough on the knees sore hands hips become sore and stiff spine area is affected

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.

Rheumatoid arthritis is an auto immune disease. This occurs when the body’s own immune system basically starts to attack itself. Rheumatoid arthritis can be a chronic and potentially disabling disease which can cause:

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

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.

Here are some of the other types of arthritis, and don’t forget there are many more not listed. You have as mentioned rheumatoid, osteo arthritis, gout, pseudogout, septic, juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and there are as I say many others.

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.

When joint pain is so severe that there may come a time when prosthetic joint replacement may become necessary. The people who have had this done are very satisfied with the results.

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.

Dinosaurs have even had evidence to have had ankle osteoarthritis. The skeletal remains of Native Americans of Tennessee were noticed to have arthritis.

As time and technology advances may be in the future there will be a cure for arthritis. But only time will tell. Right now we try to treat the symptoms of pain and stiffness the best that we can.

There are other ways to treat arthritis, other than the couple of ways that were mentioned in this article. I will write another one detailing some of the other methods that are available.

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