The medical condition known as rheumatoid arthritis has a severe affect on the joints making them rigid, stiff, painful and swollen. The inflammation can often be experienced in joints such as knees, wrists, hands, ankles and the metatarsals of the feet. This problem is generally seen to arise in people aged between 30-50 years old, but in less common cases children can also become affected. This is caused by an imbalance in the immune system. The body's immune system is supposed to fight off foreign bodies entering the human body. However, when rheumatoid arthritis occurs, the immune system starts attacking its own cells in a state of innocent confusion, thus aggressively breaking down the functionality of the joints and the joint linings.

Avoiding arthritis

There is no known cause to Rheumatoid Arthritis, yet there are many theories that the occurrence of this disease may be different for different individuals. For example, some believe it may be due to a viral or bacterial infection, and there may also be some genetic predisposition that can 'allow' this process to occur under the right sequence of conditions. In any case, once someone is dealing with this disease on a day-to-day basis, it is important to minimize factors that aggravate pain. Being overweight is one factor which has an intensive effect on rheumatoid arthritis pain. As additional weight loads the joints in the lower body, having excess weight will always result into increasing the pain. Doctors always suggest keeping your body mass index maintained to keep the diseases at a bay.

Studies have also shown that smoking tobacco also increases the risk of this disease. Even for those that are addicted to cigarettes, it should be imperative to try to eliminate smoking as quickly as possible, to reduce the slow and long-term damage that can be caused by serious RA. No matter how hard it is to quit, quitting should be the ultimate goal. RA is a terrible disease that should be taken very seriously, and all efforts should be made to avoid pain triggers.

There are a huge number of rheumatoid arthritis remedies that claim to be very effective but none of them are a certain RA cure. The best bet is to review that studies in the scientific literature which have shown for many years that a low-fat vegan diet seems to be the best way forward for sufferers of RA. In fact, those that have followed a low-fat vegan diet have made tremendous improvements in just a few weeks at pain reduction and measurable improvements to their blood tests such as CRP and ESR.

A recently discovered fact about rheumatoid arthritis is that the risk of developing this disease may reduce to some level due to a regular exposure to sunlight. Soaking up the sun may reduce a woman's risk of rheumatoid arthritis. New research has shown that those regularly exposed to sunlight reduced their risk of developing the condition by a fifth. But using sun creams or covering up to avoid the sun could lessen the protective effects, so it is about finding a balance between harmful UV exposure and absorbing the suns beneficial rays.