Arthritis is a severe, painful and debilitating disease that has already stricken millions of people around the world. The word “arthritis” comes from such Greek words as “arthron”, which means “joint”, and “itis”, which means “inflammation” (Nordqvist). Accordingly, arthritis is a disease of the musculoskeletal system of the body, but it affects mostly the joints (Nordqvist). “A joint” is a place where bones connect (Teitel and Zieve) and where a bending movement occurs. It is the symptoms of arthritis that make a person’s life unbearable and quite complicated; the symptoms include fatigue, pain and swelling of one or more joints, stiffness, particularly after sleep, redness of diseased joints, and so on (Nordqvist). In the majority of cases, it is impossible to cure arthritis completely (Nordqvist), so the only way out is to learn how to handle joint pain, stiffness and its other symptoms and to learn how to live with the disease. The nature and causes of joint inflammation depend on the type of arthritis, which is why the method of dealing with the disease also depends on its type.
There are two most spread types of arthritis: osteoarthritis and rheumatoid arthritis; however, there are more than one hundred types of this disease (Teitel and Zieve). Each type has its own characteristics and its own effect on the body and the joints; although the symptoms of all the types are very similar. Let us consider the most common types of arthritis.
Osteoarthritis affects people of over 40 years of age and it is actually the disease of elderly people (Nordqvist). Osteoarthritis is developed gradually over a long period of time when cartilage of a joint wears out and bones start to rub against each other; it causes intense pain, inflammation and swelling (Teitel and Zieve). As a result, people experience pain in their joints while performing such typical daily activities as walking, dressing, cleaning, washing, cooking and so on. Little by little, when not treated, osteophytes (spurs) appear on the surface of affected bones causing even more serious pain (Nordqvist), which disables an ill person even further. This type of arthritis usually develops in the joints that bear much body weight, e.g. knees and hips (Nordqvist), especially when people are obese. Surgery may be the only choice to live a pain-free life again. It can be a total replacement of a damaged joint or its reconstruction (Teitel and Zieve).
Rheumatoid arthritis is a result of an autoimmune disorder, when “the body’s immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue” (Teitel and Zieve), mostly in the joints, and it can happen in young age as well as in old age; nevertheless it affects women more often than men (Nordqvist). When this type of arthritis has been untreated for a long time, it causes deformity of an ill joint or joints (Nordqvist). Deformity often happens with fingers and toes. In fact, deformity is the last stage of rheumatoid arthritis untreated …