.....To be honest, I thought of starting this column by saying that “arthritis is a very painful condition to write about”, but in the end that seemed like a very poor way to make the point I want to make, namely, that arthritis presents a real problem as a topic for a medical writer – in other words, it’s painful for the writer - not only because there aren’t too many easy jokes you can make about such a frustrating condition, but also because there are so many types of arthritis out there (over 100 and counting) that it’s pretty hard to come up with any intelligent generalizations (and medical writers live off generalizations, a generalization that I dare you to challenge).
.....All of which means that it’s been very difficult for me to decide how to approach this topic, which alas! is the one my editor picked for this month but only after making the nearly de rigeur pun about, “Hey, Arthur, arthuritis ought to be an easy one for you to do, eh?” which is a perfect example of why that man has been told on numerous occasions – and not just by me - not to become a stand-up comic, or even a sit-down comic, for that matter. |
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.....Anyway, arthritis it is, so let me get the easy part out of the way, which is a definition: the ending “itis” means inflammation, so “arthritis” means an inflamed joint.
.....Thus, arthritis can stem from anything that inflames a joint’s lining, or tissues around or in the joint (such as cartilage).
.....If we break down arthritis into the usual categories that physicians like to use, among the more well-known and common ones we end up with are:
Degeneration or “osteoarthritis”, which is more commonly but inaccurately known as wear-and-tear arthritis (OA accounts for roughly 90 % of all cases of arthritis, most of those boomers and
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seniors who have chronic hip and knee pain and many of whom end up with a joint replacement as a consequence).
.....Auto-immune conditions (these occur when the body starts to attack its own tissues because the immune system has been led to believe – erroneously – that those tissues are foreign) such as “rheumatoid arthritis” and “lupus arthritis.”
.....“Gouty arthritis” in which uric acid crystals get deposited in the joints and cause inflammation in that joint, especially, if you remember Jiggs and Maggie (and if you don’t, they were the Simpson family of their day), the large toe of the foot (uric acid is a normal waste product of protein turnover that is normally excreted through the kidneys, but in gout, uric acid levels become elevated in the blood and uric acid gets deposited in other areas).
.....“Ankylosing spondylitis”, that interesting condition that often hits the spine hardest, and which affects 3-5 times more men (and often young men) than women
.....Fibromyalgia, a still-hotly debated condition in which a person complains of multiple points of |
