Osteoarthritis in Women? Almost everyone has experienced joint pain. Society often mistakenly assume all joint pain caused by gout or rheumatism. Both diseases can cause joint pain indeed, but it is really rare.
Other diseases are often considered to result in joint pain is cholesterol and osteoporosis. This assumption is wrong because cholesterol and osteoporosis never cause joint pain.
The main causes of joint pain at the age of 45 years, especially the knees and hips, is a joint calcification. At the age of under 45 years, the leading cause of joint pain is caused by muscle inflammation excessive physical activity or sport due to injury.
Calcification of the joints or osteoarthritis is a disease in which the joint cartilage thinning. Functioning cartilage lining the ends of the bones forming the joint, so the joint can move freely without pain.
The function of the joint cartilage can be likened to a function that coats wheels vehicle tires so the car can move freely without hindrance. Just like car tires that will be depleted due to wear caused by friction with the road, as well as the joint cartilage will wear out and thinned rub against each other every time the joint moves.
If the joint cartilage is damaged and thinning, the ends of bones forming the joint rub against each other and meet directly without coating cartilage, causing joint pain.
Causes Of Osteoarthritis
Cause thinning of the cartilage on joint calcification is not known with certainty and are considered as part of the aging process. Each person will experience joint calcification of varying degrees.
In addition, as part of the aging process, joint calcification seen as a result of a number of risk factors as follows: (1) women over 45 years of age, (2) overweight, (3) excessive physical activity, such as athletes and construction workers and (4) suffered thigh muscle weakness, or (5) had suffered broken bones around the joints do not get proper treatment.
Symptoms Of Osteoarthritis
Early-stage symptoms of Osteoarthritis is usually a pain and joint stiffness after a long time did not move, such as getting out of bed or after sitting for a long time. Knee joint pain as well when used for walking, up and down stairs, or squatting. Often you hear a “crick-crick” when the knee joint is moved.
In later stages, in addition to the more intense the pain, the knee joint becomes bent like the letter O or the letter X.
In the X-ray, a gap that had calcified knee joint joints seem more narrow than normal joint gap.
The degree of narrowing of the joint gap on X-ray is used to determine the severity (stage) calcification of the joints. There are 4 stages of calcification of the joints, the stage 1 and 2 were categorized as mild joint calcification, whereas stages 3 and 4 as severe calcification of the joints.
In stage 1, the gap is still normal joint width, but no pain in the knee joint. Cracks joints at stage 2 is narrower than normal. While on stage 3, the joint gap is very narrow and at stage 4, the joint gap closes; situation is due to a layer of cartilage covering the bone ends and “fill” the joint gap has disappeared altogether.
Treatments For Osteoarthritis
Treatment depends on the stage of Osteoarthritis. Treatment for mild degree of calcification of the joints (ie stage 1 and 2) consists of (1) weight loss for overweight, (2) exercises to strengthen the thigh and hip muscles and to keep in shape, such as swimming and riding a bike, (3) anti-inflammatory and anti-pain, (4) a supplement containing glucosamine to regenerate cartilage, and (5) joint lubrication medicine containing hyaluronic acid and need to be injected into the joint. Laymen often refer to the latter drugs as an addition to “oil the joints”.
Joint lubricant injection drug benefit only a mild joint calcification (stage 1 and 2). For severe calcification of joints (stages 3 and 4) the drug is not useful because the joint cartilage in general is not only thin, but it has disappeared altogether so that no cartilage left to lubricated again.
Quite a lot of patients who have received drug injections disappointed lubricating joints, but not cured. Many of them received an injection of 5 to 10 times on both knees, but still feels pain. This is because they have experienced joint calcification stage 3 or 4 so that the drugs are not useful lubricating joints.
Therefore, non-surgical forms of treatment mentioned above is usually only useful for mild joint calcification (stage 1 and 2) and did not provide satisfactory results for the heavy degree. For severe calcification of joints (ie, stages 3 and 4), the best treatment option available is joint replacement surgery.
Joint Replacement Surgery
Joint replacement surgery is a surgery performed to replace the damaged joint with an artificial joint called a prosthesis. Most joint replacement surgery performed on the knee joint and the hip joint as the two joints are most often damaged due to calcification of the joints.
Prevention Of Osteoarthritis
Because as part of the aging process, joint calcification in fact can not be prevented. What you can do is reduce the risk of calcification of the joints, by (1) weight loss for overweight, (2) did not do too much physical activity, (3) immediately see if you suffer from joint pain so mild calcification of the joint stage worse can not be prevented severe stage.
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