Deforming osteoarthritis is one of the most common joint pathologies. About 80% of all rheumatic diseases are caused by this disease, which is based on cartilage damage. As a rule, the disease develops when the articular cartilage is exposed to excessive stress and can no longer cope with it. Why does this happen and is it possible to resist this process?
Cartilage is a fragile substance: it must be protected
Excessive loads
It has been noted that boxers and textile workers tend to develop arthrosis of the joints of the hands. Farmers and basketball players have knee joints.
Tennis players and workers who use jackhammers have shoulders. In other words, those joints that bear the maximum load in everyday life suffer the most.
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Shoulder arthrosis: how to deal with a rare type of disease However, it is dangerous not in itself, but because it leads to regular microtraumas, due to which the intra-articular cartilage begins to crack and thin over time.
Preventive actions
To prevent joint destruction, it is necessary to start taking care of their health as early as possible.
The following measures are recommended as prevention:
- Active lifestyle. Be sure to include sports in your life, move more, and do daily exercises.
- Proper nutrition. A balanced diet will help fill nutritional deficiencies and keep your weight under control.
- Use of chondroprotectors. The price of such products is low, but they help slow down the wear of joints.
- Quality rest. After physical labor, it is necessary to ensure proper rest, relaxation of muscles and ligaments.
- Avoiding injury. Even minor impacts and falls from low heights can negatively affect the condition of joints in the future.
- Taking vitamins. If there is a deficiency of calcium and other elements, it is necessary to replenish it with the help of nutritional supplements.
- Health monitoring. Internal problems inevitably affect the state of all body systems, so they must be eliminated without delay.
- Timely access to the hospital. If symptoms of joint destruction appear, you should immediately seek qualified medical help.
You can get more useful information about the destruction and subsequent restoration of joints from the video in this article.
Excess weight
The weight of the body puts pressure on the supporting joints - hip and knee, as well as on the joints of the spine.
And the more excess kilograms a person has, the higher the load and the correspondingly higher the risk that the intra-articular cartilage will begin to wear out ahead of time.
In addition, adipose tissue impedes the flow of blood to the joint, and therefore its nutrition. By the way, excess weight not only increases the risk of arthrosis, but also worsens the course of the disease - joint destruction progresses faster.
Treatment methods
It is important to treat problems that arise in several stages in order to achieve the highest possible results. Remember that the sooner you start treatment, the greater the chance of completely eliminating the problem.
- Step one
, eliminating symptoms. This will help get rid of annoying discomfort and pain. - Step two
, determining the causes of the pathology or disorder. It is important to correctly determine the cause of the beginning destruction. This stage helps determine the treatment that will bring results. - Step three
, recovery. At this stage, the consequences of destructive processes are eliminated. Bone and soft tissues are replaced with new ones as much as possible, the patient will not encounter similar problems in the future.
Vitamins
Everyone knows that calcium is responsible for the strength and durability of bones. But in order for it to be retained in the body, it is also necessary to ensure sufficient levels of vitamin D3. At the same time, collagen forms cartilage. And for its sufficient generation, you also need to receive certain groups of vitamins.
Vitamin A helps absorb calcium and phosphorus, affects internal processes that regularly renew the body.
Vitamin E stabilizes lipids, strengthens ligaments and provides sufficient flexibility.
Vitamin C is involved in the active production of collagen and stimulates full-fledged immunity.
Conservative therapy
This approach to treatment will be effective if the stages of destruction are at the initial stage. At this time, there is a fairly high chance of saving the joint from complete destruction.
- Medication support.
Medicines are prescribed to relieve symptoms. These are mainly analgesics and anti-inflammatory drugs. - The hardware effect
enhances the effect of medications. - The right diet.
Nutrition is very important to restore proper body functions and support it during treatment. - Visit to the sanatorium.
Some medical and preventive institutions specialize specifically in the musculoskeletal system. - Exercise therapy.
Correctly selected exercises will help increase the flexibility of the body and restore damaged areas. - Immobilization.
To prevent the disease from worsening, the patient is immobilized.
Operation
In cases of extremely advanced pathology, surgical intervention is required. It is mainly used to remove growths, dead particles and completely destroyed parts of the bone. Most often, operations are performed on the hip joint, replacing it with an endoprosthesis. This helps the patient to be on his feet for a long time. Prostheses do not take root in isolated cases, for example, in case of intolerance to the components.
The cartilage layer is built up from your own reserves. After transplantation, the damaged area is stimulated with a laser, causing increased cell regeneration. But it’s worth thinking about how to protect your joints from destruction, so as not to end up on the operating table.
Folk remedies
You can ensure your mobility into old age using folk methods. There are some tips that every person should take into account. They do not contradict medical indications and many scientific luminaries recognize the effectiveness of such methods.
Eat cartilage. This is especially true for chicken and pork cartilage. A person who likes to eat jellied meat suffers significantly less from destructive processes in connective tissues.
Sunflower decoction and golden mustache ointment perfectly remove salts deposited in the joints. Eggshell powder saturates the body with calcium and other beneficial elements and can cure many bone problems
Elderly age
Intra-articular cartilage is 80% water, and aging of the body is associated with loss of moisture. When its content in cartilage decreases, it becomes less elastic and resilient, and therefore can no longer provide shock absorption during movement and smooth sliding of the bones of the joint relative to each other.
As a result, the risk of microtrauma to the joint increases not only with increased, but even with habitual load.
In addition, with age, the renewal of all tissues, including cartilage, slows down, but the process of cell destruction, on the contrary, is activated. This, even without additional risk factors, leads to accelerated wear of the cartilage.
Diagnostics
The question of how to protect joints is mainly asked by people after 30 years of age. However, it is worth thinking about health earlier in order to prevent the processes from becoming irreversible. To determine the presence of a problem and its source, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive examination. It should include:
- X-ray
. Detects displacements and destruction in bones. - Ultrasound.
With its help, it is easy to detect foci of inflammation and possible neoplasms. - CT and MRI.
These procedures allow you to most accurately assess the condition of the soft tissues surrounding the movable joint of the bones. Tomography also allows for diagnostics of the joints themselves. - Osteoscintigraphy.
Such an examination is carried out when there is a suspicion of a developed destruction process. It allows you to identify foci of inflammation for further elimination. - Arthroscopy
. Allows you to examine large connections using a microscopic camera.
Sedentary lifestyle
Not only dynamic loads are dangerous for joints, when a person, for example, works a lot physically, but also static ones, when he stays in one position for a long time.
Therefore, those who sit in an office chair most of the day and move little in their leisure time suffer from arthrosis quite often.
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Take care of your joints from a young age! How to reduce the risk of arthrosis This is due to a decrease in blood supply to the joint, which in this case is practically inactive.
Without receiving enough nutrients, intra-articular cartilage recovers more slowly.
Which joints hurt most often?
The most common destruction of joint tissue occurs in large areas of articulation. But they are not the only ones at risk.
- Hip joint.
This place is mostly suffering from age. Thinning of the cartilage layer, bone fragility, as well as congenital pathologies leading to injuries. - Kneecaps.
This connection bears the most load. People of all ages can experience discomfort and pain in their knees. - The ankle and shoulder joints
suffer in athletes and those engaged in heavy physical labor. - Brush elements.
This part of the skeleton is susceptible to atrophy and arthritis in those whose work involves fine motor skills.
Injuries
Fractures, dislocations, as well as ruptures or tears of the meniscus, and sprained tendons can subsequently lead to arthrosis.
Moreover, it can develop either almost immediately after the injury or years later. In some cases, the cause of this is direct damage to the intra-articular cartilage, against the background of which the metabolism in its tissue may change.
In others, long-term application of plaster or orthoses that deprive the joint of movement. Without working as nature intended, it does not receive proper nutrition, and this also leads to premature wear of the cartilage.
Causes of arthrosis
It has not yet been possible to establish the exact causes of arthrosis. However, scientists have identified the main risk factors influencing the development of this disease. Based on the reasons for the development of the disease, arthrosis is divided into secondary and primary.
Primary arthrosis is the result of increased degeneration in cartilage tissue and disruption of the restoration processes in the joint without any pathological abnormalities in the functioning of the human body. Secondary arthrosis occurs as a result of other abnormalities in the body or in an already injured joint, with partial damage to the articular surfaces. The form of traumatic arthrosis mainly manifests itself in young people. In older patients, it is not always possible to draw a clear line between the primary and secondary forms of the disease.
It is impossible to establish the true cause of the disease, but the factors that contribute to its development and occurrence are well known.
Patient Reminder
1. We can't do anything about age and heredity, but the influence of other "threats" can be reduced. Follow safety precautions when working and playing sports to avoid injury.
Be physically active, but don't overdo it. Eat a healthy diet to avoid gaining weight.
2. If you experience joint discomfort, be sure to consult a doctor - this will prevent the progression of arthrosis.
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Arthrosis: truth and myths about joint problems Wear of cartilage tissue is irreversible: there is no treatment method that would restore it to its original healthy level. However, the destruction of the joint can be stopped - for this, drugs from the group of chondroprotectors are used. They contain the substance chondroitin sulfate, which suppresses the activity of enzymes that contribute to the destruction of cartilage, and also participates in the construction of cartilage tissue. Another substance included in chondroprotectors (both alone and in combination with chondroitin sulfate) is called glucosamine.
It stimulates the production of hyaluronic acid, which is responsible for the hydration of cartilage, reduces pain and improves joint function.
3. Treatment with chondroprotectors is most effective at the first and second stages of arthrosis, but these drugs are also used at the third stage. But on the fourth, when the cartilage is almost destroyed, the only way out is endoprosthetics - replacing the joint with an artificial one.
This intervention has a number of contraindications and side effects. Therefore, it is better not to bring the joints to such a state and start treatment on time.
Characteristic symptoms
Damage to the bone junction may be isolated, for example due to trauma. But the older a person gets, the more pain he experiences when bending his legs or arms and a decrease in flexibility in general. This happens because the normal production of cartilage tissue is inhibited. As a result, the frictional force begins to destroy the bone, thereby causing great discomfort.
The symptoms indicate destruction of the joints quite clearly. It is enough to pay attention to them to stop this process. A degenerative process in mobile bone junctions is indicated by:
- Pain and aching in the bones, especially when moving,
- Creaking, crunching and clicking in places where the limbs bend,
- Deformation and change in size of bone junctions,
- Swelling and hyperemia,
- Difficulty in movement, chronic arthrosis,
- Muscle stiffness and atrophy.