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If aging parents are complaining about pain and stiffness, it could be arthritis. Arthritis is one of the most common diseases in this country. Millions of adults and half of all people age 65 and older are troubled by this disease.

Arthritis can attack joints in almost any part of the body. Some forms of arthritis cause changes you can see and feel—swelling, warmth, and redness in your joints. In some the pain and swelling last only a short time, but are very bad. Other types cause less troublesome symptoms, but still slowly damage your joints.

Warning Signs

Here are some warning signs that might point to arthritis:

• Lasting joint pain
• Joint swelling
• Joint stiffness
• Tenderness or pain when touching a joint
• Problems using or moving a joint normally
• Warmth and redness in a joint

If any one of these symptoms lasts longer than 2 weeks, have your parent see their  regular doctor or a rheumatologist. If your loved one has a fever, feels physically ill, suddenly has a swollen joint, or has problems using their joints, see your doctor sooner. Your health care provider will ask questions about the elder’s symptoms and do a physical exam. He or she may take x-rays or do lab tests before suggesting a treatment plan.

Types of Arthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common type of arthritis in older people. OA starts when cartilage begins to become ragged and wears away. Cartilage is the tissue that pads bones in a joint. OA symptoms can range from stiffness and mild pain that comes and goes with activities like walking, bending, or stooping to severe joint pain that keeps on even when the elder is resting or trying sleep.

Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) is an autoimmune disease. In RA, the body attacks the lining of a joint just as it would if it were trying to protect you from injury or disease. For example, if your elderly parent had a splinter in their finger, the finger would become inflamed—painful, red, and swollen. RA leads to inflammation in the joints. This inflammation causes pain, swelling, and stiffness that lasts for hours. This can often happen in many different joints at the same time. Your aging parent might not even be able to move the joint. People with RA often don’t feel well. They may be tired or run a fever. People of any age can develop RA, and it is more common in women.

Gout is one of the most painful forms of arthritis. An attack can begin when crystals of uric acid form in the connective tissue and/or joint spaces. These deposits lead to swelling, redness, heat, pain, and stiffness in the joint. Gout attacks often follow eating foods like shellfish, liver, dried beans, peas, anchovies, or gravy. Gout is most often a problem in the big toe, but it can affect other joints, including the ankle, elbow, knee, wrist, hand, or other toes. Swelling may cause the skin to pull tightly around the joint and make the area red or purple and very tender.

Reactive Arthritis is a form of arthritis, or joint inflammation, that occurs as a “reaction” to an infection elsewhere in the body. Reactive arthritis is also known as Reiter’s syndrome. Besides this joint inflammation, reactive arthritis is associated with two other symptoms: redness and inflammation of the eyes (conjunctivitis) and inflammation of the urinary tract (urethritis).

Other forms of arthritis include psoriatic arthritis (in people with the skin condition psoriasis), ankylosing spondylitis (which mostly affects the spine), reactive arthritis (arthritis that occurs as a reaction to another illness in the body), and arthritis in the temporomandibular joint (where the jaw joins the skull).

Each kind of arthritis is handled a little differently, but there are some common treatments for arthritis. Rest, exercise, eating a healthy, well-balanced diet, and learning the right way to use and protect the joints are key to living with any kind of arthritis.

Source:  Agingcare.com

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Glucosamine: No Real Relief for Chronic Lower Back Pain

The popular supplement glucosamine doesn’t appear to relieve lower back pain, according to new research.

Eight out of 10 Americans will experience lower back pain during their lifetimes. For some it’s a fleeting inconvenience, but for others it’s a chronic condition affecting health, work and quality of life. In search of relief, more than a quarter of the millions of Americans with chronic back pain take glucosamine, but a new study reports that this widely available dietary supplement provides little real benefit.

A team of researchers at the Oslo University Hospital looked at 250 people over the age of 25 with chronic lower back pain who also showed signs of osteoarthritis in the lower back. Half were given 1,500 milligrams of glucosamine; the rest were given a placebo.

Patients were asked to describe their back pain using a standard rating scale. At the start, all the patients scored between 9 and 10 on a scale of 24. After six months, the placebo and the glucosamine groups showed the same improvement, both rating their back pain at about 5 on the scale.

“We found no difference in pain level or quality of life between those taking glucosamine and those taking the placebo,” says Philip Wilkens, lead author and a research fellow in the orthopedic department at the University of Oslo in Norway. While the study found no adverse effects from taking glucosamine, patients suffering from chronic low back pain will most likely not benefit from taking the supplement, Wilkens says.

“This was a well-done study to test a widely used therapy,” says Andrew L. Avins, M.D., research scientist in the Division of Research at Northern California Kaiser-Permanente in Oakland, and author of an editorial on glucosamine and lower back pain.

“And while I would not encourage clinicians to recommend glucosamine as a treatment for chronic lower back pain, if a patient is taking it and believes it’s helping, that merits a discussion between physician and patient,” he says.

Source: AARP.org

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But weight loss may help

Arthritis of the knee is striking Americans at younger ages, new research has found, but shedding a few pounds if you’re overweight may reduce your risk.

The studies were to be presented Saturday at the American College of Rheumatology annual meeting, in Chicago.

Nearly 6.5 million Americans between the ages of 35 and 84 will receive a diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis in the next decade, according to these new projections.

“The diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis is occurring much earlier,” said study author Dr. Elena Losina, co-director of the Orthopedics and Arthritis Center for Outcomes Research at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

When she compared the age at diagnosis in the 1990s to ages in the 2010s, “the average age at diagnosis has moved from 69 to 56,” she said.

It strikes some earlier than the average age, of course. Losina found that adults aged 45 to 54 will account for nearly 5 percent of all knee osteoarthritis (OA) cases in the 2010s, while they represented only 1.5 percent of the knee OA patients in the 1990s.

Losina suspects that obesity and knee injuries, both of which have become more common in the past decade, may be helping to drive the increase in knee OA among younger people.

Injuries to the knee have been linked with an increased risk of knee arthritis. And certain sports are riskier than others, said another researcher, Dr. Jeffrey Driban, an assistant professor of rheumatology at Tufts Medical Center in Boston. He reviewed studies that looked at a link between sports participation and knee OA. He focused on 16 studies, and then honed in on 10 that looked at athletes and nonathletes.

While there were not great differences later in the amount of knee OA for former sports players and nonathletes, he did find a risk linked with the type of sport and level of participation.

Soccer players, whether elite level or not, had a greater risk of knee OA, he found. So did elite long-distance runners, competitive weight lifters and wrestlers.

The increased risk of arthritis in these participants varied from about threefold to more than sixfold compared to nonathletes, he said.

For those who already have knee OA, the best medicine may be weight loss if they are overweight, and exercise.

In another study, Dr. Stephen Messier of Wake Forest University found that a program of diet and exercise reduced pain and improved mobility by as much as 50 percent in those with knee arthritis.

He assigned adults with knee OA and pain to one of three groups for the 18-month program. One group dieted only, one group exercised only and one group did both.

In all, 399 overweight or obese men and women, average age 66, completed the study. The diet and exercise group lost the most weight, averaging 11.4 percent of their body weight. The diet-only group lost 9.5 percent; the exercise-only group lost 2.2 percent.

When they compared pain and mobility, the diet and exercise group reported much less pain and had greater walking speed than the other groups.

Driban suggested that those who want to minimize the risk of knee OA later should consider sports with a lower knee injury risk, such as swimming and cycling.

However, a sports medicine specialist took issue with that suggestion. “There is no evidence that impact sports like running causes arthritis in a healthy knee,” said Dr. Stephen Nicholas, director of the Nicholas Institute of Sports Medicine and Athletic Trauma at Lenox Hill Hospital, in New York City.

Like other experts, he does agree that once a knee injury occurs, a person is at higher risk for knee arthritis.

However, if someone has a healthy knee, Nicholas said he would tell them to pick the sport they enjoy.

Losina’s research was funded by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of Arthritis and Musculoskeletal and Skin Diseases. All three studies should be viewed as preliminary, as they were presented at a medical meeting and not yet peer-reviewed.

Source: AARP.org

Contact Pure Home Care Services at (586) 293-2457 today!  If you live in Warren or the surrounding area, we can help you care for your loved ones.