Arthritis Meaning?

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.

There are more than 100 rheumatic diseases and other conditions, that can cause pain, stiffness in the body and also 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 do they have in common, 100 different diseases

We have a hundred different forms of arthritis, so what is common with all of them? The answer to this question is without a doubt pain. The arthritis pain will be different among all of the individuals suffering from arthritis, and the location of the pain will also be different.

Warning signs and some symptoms of 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.

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:

decreased function in the affected joint tenderness to the touch pain in the affected area swelling around the joint where pain is being felt

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 - 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.

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.

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 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.