Arthritis Pain Q & A's
What is arthritis?
Arthritis is a category of 100-plus different individual diseases that cause joint problems. Joint damage from arthritis often affects the spine, but it can appear in any big or small joint throughout your body.
The most common forms of arthritis are osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis.
Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis develops when the cartilage between your joints degrades over time. Obesity, joint injury, infections, and heavy physical activity, like that seen in elite athletes, can bring on osteoarthritis faster.
Eventually, the bones connect as the cartilage dissipates, often causing terrible pain.
Rheumatoid arthritis
Rheumatoid arthritis occurs when your immune system attacks the synovial membrane covering your joints. This causes serious inflammation and pain. Rheumatoid arthritis can cause abnormal tissue development, which triggers the release of harmful substances around your joints.
This process speeds up bone erosion, destroys cartilage, and damages nearby tissues. Ultimately, this can lead to joint deformities.
All forms of arthritis are harmful and damaging, which is why recognizing symptoms and pursuing diagnosis and treatment is so important.
What are the signs of arthritis?
Arthritis often causes such symptoms as:
- Joint pain
- Joint swelling
- Joint deformity
- Red skin around affected joints
- Poor range of motion
- Stiffness
Arthritis symptoms typically intensify over time, often becoming especially serious in older adults. Instead of living with arthritis limitations, get help at Headache & Pain Center,amc.
What is the best treatment for arthritis pain?
Millions of Americans struggle to find effective arthritis symptom relief. Arthritis is the most common diagnosed condition among long-term opioid users in America today.
Unfortunately, opioids give you only very short-term relief, and you can build up a high tolerance to them quickly. Even worse, opioids are highly addictive and aren’t very effective in terms of restoring your mobility and quality of life in the long term.
For all of these reasons, Headache & Pain Center,amc takes a different approach to arthritis symptom relief. The team uses minimally invasive procedures — never major surgery — to subdue arthritis symptoms long-term, rather than quick fixes involving opioids.
Your treatment may include:
- Topical analgesics
- Steroid injections to lower inflammation levels and reduce arthritis pain
- Nerve block injections to stop pain signals
- Radiofrequency facet joint treatments to disable painful nerves
- Spinal cord stimulation to intercept nerve signaling and prevent pain
Arthritis treatment often also includes noninvasive treatments like physical therapy, spinal decompression, and transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) as well.
Headache & Pain Center,amc offers dozens of different pain management options, so the team will recommend one that can relieve the joint pain, spine pain, and other chronic symptoms associated with arthritis.
Click the online appointment maker or call Headache & Pain Center,amc to set up your consultation with an expert pain management physician now.
