Arthritis Explained - Know Your Pain.
Arthritis is a condition that affects the musculoskeletal system including the joints, causing stiffness, inflammation, pain and eventually damage to the joint cartilage. The joints are protected by tissue called cartilage which ensures the ends of bones don’t rub against one another. They are like the glands in our body and the cells they are made of are called chondrocytes. All chondrocytes have a life cycle and when they die, new ones are made to take their place.
The swelling that is caused due to arthritis damages more cells of the cartilage and most of the time the body takes time to generate new cells. This is more so if the body is undernourished and lacks the required nutrients to repair or the joint has suffered an injury. The condition causes damage where instability, deformities and joint weakness can obstruct daily life. Arthritis is normally treated with physical therapy, medication and includes changes to the person’s way of life or lifestyle. The last option left for the physicians to relieve the patients from discomfort is joint replacement surgery.
Arthritis is mainly categorized into two types, ‘localized’ and ‘generalized’ depending on which areas are affected (body or the joints). They are then sub categorized. Localized conditions are bursitis and tendonitis and they affect the soft tissues surrounding the bones and joints. A sub-category of localized arthritis affects one or some of the joints like hip or knee joints. It could also be that the patient is affected in a more general sense with no inflammation or signs of swelling. In this condition there is no evident kind of damage caused to the joints and is known as Fibromyalgia. This kind of arthritis is widespread among people.
The second sub category is one where there is inflammation and the whole body is affected. Under this category, rheumatoid arthritis would be an example of a condition you would see, along with psoriatic arthritis and gout. Other generalized conditions are polymyositis (muscles); systemic lupus erythematosus (skin, kidneys, or other organs); and vasculitis (any organ).
An individual is capable of having more than just one arthritis type and it includes over one hundred different medical conditions that are known to affect roughly forty six million adults and three hundred thousand children within the United States. The condition is most common as osteoarthritis in adults age 60 and above but it can start as early as infancy. The number of people suffering out of this condition is increasing proportionally with the increasing average age of the American population. With old age setting in people suffering with arthritis is increasing day by day.
However a person may suffer from multiple kinds of arthritis, in the United States of America around forty six million adults and abut three hundred thousand children suffer from hundred medical conditions. As early on as infancy, this condition can begin, even though it is most commonly seen in adults that are over the age of sixty, in the primary form of osteoarthritis. The number of people suffering out of this condition is increasing proportionally with the increasing average age of the American population. With old age setting in people suffering with arthritis is increasing day by day.
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