Many Different Diseases All Called Arthritis

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.

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.

The time that joints are starting to get damaged is when it is said that you have arthritis. Most of us realize that this condition affects the older population. Each of the different forms of arthritis all have there 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.

If you have one or more of the above symptoms for two weeks or more, you need to go and talk to your doctor. You need to go and have these warning signs and/or symptoms 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.

Osteoarthritis - what you will find is that the pain is worse at night or after rest. Osteo arthritis is a degenerative joint disease that results from wear and tear. Some of the symptoms of this are:

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 - pain is felt in the morning. Sometimes in the elderly and children the pain may not be as pronounced, but some limbs may not want to function.

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

Why rheumatoid arthritis occurs is still not known. Why the body attacks itself is a mystery. Doctors are wondering if this is genetic? It can be hard at first to tell if a person is suffering from rheumatiod arthritis, since it occurs so gradually.

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.

There are times when joint pain become so severe that it may be time to try prosthetic joint replacement. This treatment has become highly effective and the patient's are very satisfied.

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.

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 methods to help arthritis sufferers. I only mentioned a couple in this article. I will detail other methods in a future article.