Understand joint problems

All of us are human and there is one thing that cannot be avoided. That is aging in our cells. In this article, I am going to discuss more in depth related tot he joints problems.

There are 400 joints or more in human body. These joints are important for human because joints connect our bones and enable movement. We take for granted for our flexibility and mobility without taking much care of our joints. Joints problems not restricted to elderly people only.

Joint problems are very common regardless of you are into vigorous exercise or doing simple task like simply sitting or standing for prolonged periods. This is due to we are exposing our bones, joints and muscles to degenerative wear and tear. When some of these problems can grow into more severe health problems such as osteoarthritis, back pain, joint pain and stiffness. Joint problems can affect anyone else with various professions. Below are some examples and susceptible to aching bones and creaking joints problems.

1. Office workers
Long working hours will result in stiffness in neck, shoulder and back from sitting at desk. For clerk or secretary whom required to type in front of computer for long hours most likely will experience stiffness on finger. For female, they might be feeling aching feet from the high heels.

2. Housewives
Normally housewives take care the whole house core from sweeping the floor until preparing the food for whole family. The work can be extensive. They are subject to joint and body aches after a long day works. Back pain when lifting heavy objects and difficulty in bending are two common symptoms faces by them.

3. Teachers, waiters, salespeople, retail jobs (Work requiring long standing hours)
For the people who are standing for long hours due to nature of the job demand, sore legs, stiff legs, hip and joint pain, swollen feet are commonly seen.

4. Athletes
Most of us will think that athletes who exercise most of the time should be free from all the problems. But we are wrong; athletes do experience muscles stiffness after gym or exercise. Sometime, the pain can increase especially in the joints areas. For excessive running, the ligament and cartilage can be tore.

5. Blue Collar workers
Normally refer to the laborer who constantly required lifting heavy goods. They will complaints backaches, joint and body aches after day work. It can be due to poor posture during the working hour and result to whole body aches.

6. Drivers, Computer Programmers (Routine tasks)
For those jobs that do not have much space for movement, for example a taxi driver only confine to the car. This group of people commonly feels joint and body aches, stiffness and numbness of limbs.

7. Senior citizen
Every senior citizen has joint problems especially on the legs and feet. They have difficulty to climb stairs, not able to walk long distance and their limbs can feel uncomfortable during cold or wet weather.

What causes joint problems?
We need to understand well the problem before we can solve it. Joint problems are usually due to the degradation of cartilage within the joints. It is a soft bone at the end of the bone where it connects to another bone to form a joint.

The cartilage acts as a lubrication between the two joints. Over time the cartilage will be wear off. For athletes due to high impact during sport activities, the cartilage wears off faster. Once the ‘'lubrication' provided by the cartilage degrades over time, the two bones start to rub against each other.

This will result in pain and restrict the movement.

At the age of 20 years old, the cartilage already starts to degrade. It is the earliest part of the body to degrade. Lack of blood supply to the cartilage area result in slowest recovery once it start to degrade.

So what will be the treatments available to the joint problems? There are 3 options treatment available to cure the joint problems.

Option 1: Clinical Treatment
When the person is in pain, normally doctor will prescribe painkiller to reduce the pain. For more severe cases, the doctor will give injection of Hyaluronic acid to decrease pain and improve mobility. The other injection option is corticosteroid which able to reduce local joint inflammation.

Option 2: Surgery
Arthroscopic debridement which flush or smooth out bone surfaces or tissues fragments. It will be minimal invasive. However it could cause blood clog, infection and nerve damage.

\Another surgery alternative is to replace damage or diseased joint with artificial joint. The risk of this surgery is the patient need to endure the pain and instability for a period of time. The muscle surrounding the joint may feel stiffness.

Option 3: Supplements
The option 3 here is just to have the oral supplements such as Glucosamine, which is to relieve pain of the joints. Chondroitin sulfate is another supplement that is for mild anti-inflammatory effect and can stimulate joint repair.

Summary
Since the joints problem are common to everyone and yet no one would like to take care of it. It can happen to any age group of people. We have to take care of our bones and joints before it too late.