Joint Pain Q & A's
What is joint pain?
Joint pain means discomfort or pain within any of your body’s bone connectors. With 360 joints in your body, you have a lot of places where you can begin to hurt. Some of the most common types of joint pain are:
- Hip pain
- Knee pain
- Shoulder pain
- Wrist pain
- Elbow pain
Each joint includes fibrous tissue and cartilage, and has ligaments, tendons, and muscles that connect and support it.
Sometimes, like in the case of shoulder joint pain, the problem may not be in the joint itself, but rather in the soft tissues around it. For example, rotator cuff pain refers to a tear or other damage in the muscles and tendons that keep your shoulder joint in its socket.
Another example of joint-area pain is tendonitis, in which one of the tendons around your joints gets badly inflamed.
What causes joint pain?
There are many reasons for joint pain, with osteoarthritis the most common. Osteoarthritis causes your joints to wear down over time, which reduces the cushion that gives you smooth movement and instead causes grating or painful motion.
Some of the many other reasons you may be having joint pain include:
- Rheumatoid arthritis
- Psoriatic arthritis
- Gout
- Bursitis: Inflamed sacs that cushion joints
- Complex regional pain syndrome related to nervous system problems
- Joint capsule swelling
Each joint includes fibrous tissue and cartilage, and has ligaments, tendons, and muscles that connect and support it. Sometimes, like in the case of shoulder joint pain, the problem may not technically be in the joint itself but rather in the soft tissues around it.
For example, rotator cuff pain refers to a tear or other damage in the muscles and tendons that keep your shoulder joint in its socket. Another example of joint-area pain is tendonitis, in which one of the tendons around your joints becomes badly inflamed.
How do you treat joint pain?
The Headache & Pain Center,amc team strives to stop your pain and help you avoid a joint replacement or other major surgery. Treatments never use opioids, as they’re not a long-term answer.
Instead, the team may recommend injections of anesthetics and steroids to turn off the nerve signaling in that area. This can include injections directly in the bursae, facet joints, sacroiliac joint, muscles surrounding joints, or in other areas near the painful joint.
Other options, including radiofrequency treatments and spinal cord stimulators, can be a long-lasting answer for disabling joint pain. The team recommends a treatment that can give you results without significant downtime.
Joint pain doesn’t have to hurt forever. Call Headache & Pain Center,amc today or use online scheduling to take the first step toward relief.
