Pain Management and Pain Relief Information

Archive for the ‘Joint Pain’ Category

Arthritis is probably the one most common seen inflammation on the bodily joints that normally result in much pain. Typical of this joint pain is swelling, stiffness, and rigid movement. In the medical fields, there are many different types of arthritis.

The sheer pain arising from arthritis on any parts or joints of the body is enough to prevent and limit daily normal working activities. On a more serious case, it can cause total disability that will result in the total inability to undertake any normal duty. It should be noted that while this is common problem, many sufferers do not really know how best to treat it. It is necessary to understand the cause of it, and the need to address this joint pain in two parts; one to be aware of the treatments available and secondly to steer clear of daily chores or activities that may worsen the affected area.

Arthritis is a result of the wear and tear of joints or cartilage. A direct cause is aging. As the person gets older, the cartilage that protects the joint wears off. This cartilage protects the joint and without the cushion, the bones rub into each other resulting in pain, inflammation or swelling and tautness.

The other common causes are a result of the over exertion or usage putting overwhelming pressure on the joints. This is obvious that many athletics fall victims to this arthritis through their quest for excellence sporting achievement. Many may call this sport injury. Other normal activities may also contribute to this joint pain such as the routine carrying of heavy loads relative to one’s weight. Occupational hazard as we called it. It may be true that an obese person may have a higher rate of contracting arthritis relative to their peers who maintain a healthy body shape due to the upper bodily weight acting as constant pressure on the lower joints.

Joint inflammation can happen due to various reasons. The common problems include:

• Fractured bone due to accident or injury.
• Breakdown of the cartilage due to old age or injury.
• Osteoarthritis is common in old age.
• Infection caused by bacteria or viruses.
• Prior injury.
• Sport injury.
• Occupational hazard.

Normal course of anti-inflammatory drugs may get the swelling to go off once the injury, disease or infection is healed.

Certain inflammation may not go away after medications. And if this joint pain resurfaces regularly the possibility of contracting arthritis is imminent. Swelling is most common to occur in areas around the fingers, hips or knees.

Other common causes of arthritis include:

• Adult Still’s disease
• Ankylosing spondylitis
• Gout
• Scleroderma
• Viral arthritis
• Psoriatic arthritis
• Reactive arthritis or also known as Reiter syndrome
• Rheumatoid arthritis (in adults)
• Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (in children)

Do you suffer from joint pain? You are not alone, as this condition is quite a common problem. There are many hip joint pain causes and it is vital that you get an accurate diagnosis of the real source of your symptoms in order to receive appropriate treatment.

Does this sound familiar?

Pain in your joints keeps you from being able to exercise how you want to, go on hikes, stand for long periods of time. This chronic pain pops up when you start a new fitness routine. Maybe you make it for a few weeks, but then the pain and injury force you to stop. Or they slow you down so much that you’re not seeing the benefits you want to from working out.

So you do what everyone does for pain: take some pain relievers and ice the joint. It’s natural for us to treat the area that hurts, right? But this approach to joint pain is all wrong.

The problem with treating the pain is that you’re treating a symptom, not the underlying cause.

We’ll use Patellofemoral Pain Syndrome(fancy way to say knee pain) as our example. PFPS is commonly seen in basketball players and runners. This pain is commonly caused by either abnormal forces(muscles around the knee aren’t pulling with equal force) or prolonged and repetitive compression and shearing on the joint(running and jumping).

When we break this down, we see that one of the major causes of this pain is from the muscle groups around the joint not being equally well developed. The other cause is essentially overuse, which is the bane of every young athlete and everyone else who aggressively starts a new routine(running too much for example).

And so when people develop this knee pain, they tend to ice their knees and take some anti-inflammatories and pain relievers. But the actual cause of the pain to begin with stems from a lack of an overall fitness plan. Building up to appropriate levels of intensity will solve the overuse problems and developing all the proper muscle groups will handle the imbalance issues.

What you should be taking away from all of this is: joint and muscle pain is an indicator that something is wrong. We usually treat pain by attempting to ‘cure’ it with ice and pain medicine. But the real fix is to look at the bigger picture and develop our fitness plan to handle this stress our body is feeling. Focus on developing core muscle groups and proper form in your exercises, and most of your pain will fix itself. Rather than treating a symptom, be willing to take a step back and address the real cause. This will improve your success in both your workouts and also your life.