Arthritis Education (Con't)

Info From http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0002223/

Arthritis

Joint inflammation

Last reviewed: February 14, 2011.

Arthritis is inflammation of one or more joints. A joint is the area where two bones meet. There are over 100 different types of arthritis.

Causes, incidence, and risk factors

Arthritis involves the breakdown of cartilage. Cartilage normally protects a joint, allowing it to move smoothly. Cartilage also absorbs shock when pressure is placed on the joint, such as when you walk. Without the normal amount of cartilage, the bones rub together, causing pain, swelling (inflammation), and stiffness.

Joint inflammation may result from:

·         An autoimmune disease (the body's immune system mistakenly attacks healthy tissue)

·         Broken bone

·         General "wear and tear" on joints

·         Infection, usually by bacteria or virus

Usually the joint inflammation goes away after the cause goes away or is treated. Sometimes it does not. When this happens, you have chronic arthritis. Arthritis may occur in men or women. Osteoarthritis is the most common type. See: Osteoarthritis

Other, more common types of arthritis include:

·         Ankylosing spondylitis

·         Gonococcal arthritis

·         Gout

·         Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (in children)

·         Other bacterial infections (nongonococcal bacterial arthritis)

·         Psoriatic arthritis

·         Reactive arthritis (Reiter syndrome)

·         Rheumatoid arthritis (in adults)

·         Scleroderma

·         Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE)

Symptoms

Arthritis causes joint pain, swelling, stiffness, and limited movement. Symptoms can include:

·         Joint pain

·         Joint swelling

·         Reduced ability to move the joint

·         Redness of the skin around a joint

·         Stiffness, especially in the morning

·         Warmth around a joint

Signs and tests

The health care provider will perform a physical exam and ask questions about your medical history.

The physical exam may show:

·         Fluid around a joint

·         Warm, red, tender joints

·         Difficulty moving a joint (called "limited range of motion")

Some types of arthritis may cause joint deformity. This may be a sign of severe, untreated rheumatoid arthritis.

Blood tests and joint x-rays are often done to check for infection and other causes of arthritis.

Your doctor may also remove a sample of joint fluid with a needle and send it to a lab for examination.

Treatment

The goal of treatment is to reduce pain, improve function, and prevent further joint damage. The underlying cause cannot usually be cured.

LIFESTYLE CHANGES

Lifestyle changes are the preferred treatment for osteoarthritis and other types of joint inflammation. Exercise can help relieve stiffness, reduce pain and fatigue, and improve muscle and bone strength. Your health care team can help you design an exercise program that is best for you.

Exercise programs may include:

·         Low-impact aerobic activity (also called endurance exercise)

·         Range of motion exercises for flexibility

·         Strength training for muscle tone

Physical therapy may be recommended. This might include:

·         Heat or ice

·         Splints or orthotics to support joints and help improve their position; this is often needed for rheumatoid arthritis

·         Water therapy

·         Massage

Other recommendations:

·         Get plenty of sleep. Sleeping 8 to 10 hours a night and taking naps during the day can help you recover from a flare-up more quickly and may even help prevent flare ups.

·         Avoid staying in one position for too long.

·         Avoid positions or movements that place extra stress on your sore joints.

·         Change your home to make activities easier. For example, install grab bars in the shower, the tub, and near the toilet.

·         Try stress-reducing activities, such as meditation, yoga, or tai chi.

·         Eat a healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables, which contain important vitamins and minerals, especially vitamin E.

·         Eat foods rich in omega-3 fatty acides, such as cold water fish (salmon, mackerel, and herring), flaxseed, rapeseed (canola) oil, soybeans, soybean oil, pumpkin seeds, and walnuts.

·         Apply capsaicin cream over your painful joints. You may feel improvement after applying the cream for 3-7 days.

·         Lose weight, if you are overweight. Weight loss can greatly improve joint pain in the legs and feet.

MEDICATIONS

Medications may be prescribed along with lifestyle changes. All medications have risks, some more than others. It is important that you are closely monitored by a doctor when taking arthritis medications.

Generally, over-the-counter medications are recommended first:

·         Acetaminophen (Tylenol) is usually tried first. Take up to 4 grams a day (two arthritis-strength Tylenol every 8 hours). Do not take more than the recommended dose or take the drug along with a lot of alcohol. Doing so may damage your your liver.

·         Aspirin, ibuprofen, or naproxen are nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) that can relieve arthritis pain. However, they have many potential risks, especially if used for a long time. Potential side effects include heart attack, stroke, stomach ulcers, bleeding from the digestive tract, and kidney damage.

Arthritis

Hello Readers -

For anyone who is interested, my name is Adrienne Rosel and I am the Marketing Director for MBF.   I wanted to start a blog for people who are looking for answers to some of their health concerns...  I am going to start with something that interests me, which is arthritis.  Yes, I am a sufferer of the dreaded "A" word.  I know there are many different approaches to dealing with arthritis, as I discover some interesting articles I will post them here.

Did you know there is a web site completely dedicated to arthritis?  I had no idea!
Here it is:
www.arthritis.org

Here is an article from the Arthritis Foundation that caught my attention:


Managing Your Pain


Thinking of pain as a signal to take positive action rather than an ordeal you have to endure can help you learn to manage your pain. 

You may want to consider taking some positive actions, such as the ones listed below, to counter pain.

Taking Control

Your mind plays an important role in how you feel pain and respond to illness. You may feel helpless and depressed. With these feelings come decreased activity, low self-esteem and increased pain. Discover some tips to manage your pain and  build a sense of personal control by adjusting your thoughts and actions.

Looking for other ways to manage your arthritis pain?

• Try heat and cold therapy. Using heat and cold treatments can reduce the pain and stiffness of arthritis.
• Consider massage. Massage brings warmth and relaxation to the painful area.
• Practice relaxation. Relaxation can give you a sense of control and well-being that makes it easier to manage pain.
• Consider surgery. When other treatment methods don't lessen the pain, or when you have major difficulty moving and using your joints, surgery may be necessary.
• Learn about other treatments.  Discover techniques that are used to treat the chronic muscle pain of fibromyalgia or chronic back pain.
• Find out about men, women and pain. See the differences in how the sexes deal with and find relief from pain.
• Osteoarthritis of the Knee: A Guide for Adults is available from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

To access this article directly, http://www.arthritis.org/manage-pain.php

Aerobic Exercise May Improve Memory in Seniors

(This article is from the NPR web site)

There's a very small structure deep in the center of our brains called the hippocampus. It's smaller than your pinkie, but it plays an absolutely essential role in learning and memory. The hippocampus encodes new information so that we can recall it later. Without a hippocampus, we would be unable to form new memories; we'd only be able to remember the old ones.

As part of normal aging, the hippocampus shrinks. And this shrinkage speeds up as we grow older, foreshadowing memory problems and dementias like Alzheimer's disease.

But there's been some good news in the past decade: Scientists have discovered that in certain areas of the aging brain, new cells are born and grow throughout through life.

Neuroscientist Peter Snyder, a researcher at Brown University's Alpert Medical School and Rhode Island Hospital, says the hippocampus is one of those brain areas that continue to form new cells and make new connections between cells.

"What we're finding is that of all of these noninvasive ways of intervening, it is exercise that seems to have the most efficacy at this point — more so than nutritional supplements, vitamins and cognitive interventions," says Snyder, who studies what we can do to maintain memory as our brains age.

Power Of Exercise

Snyder says several studies have been published recently on the power of exercise on the aging brain.

"The literature on exercise is just tremendous," he says. "What we find is that with exercise — with aerobic exercise, a moderate amount on a regular basis — there are chemical changes that occur in the brain that promote the growth of new neurons in [the hippocampus]."

The major chemical change in the hippocampus during aerobic exercise is an increase in a brain protein called BDNF, which acts like a fertilizer during the birth of new brain cells by nourishing new connections between neurons.

Some of the most provocative evidence on the power of exercise on the brain comes from a study just published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences by neuroscientist Art Kramer at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Kramer and his colleagues have documented the impact of exercise on the growth of the hippocampus in a small group of elderly people over the course of one year.

"The participants in our study were 120 very sedentary people," Kramer says.

He adds none had dementia or memory problems when they entered the study. "They were relatively healthy, but certainly 'couch potatoes' would fit as a label."

Getting Couch Potatoes Moving

One of those "couch potatoes" who volunteered for the study was Gregory Stanton, a 66-year-old semi-retired college professor. He admits to not exercising regularly but counters that he was physically quite active remodeling his home. So he refers to himself as "a semi-couch potato."

Stanton and the other 120 men and women in the study ranged from 60 to 80 years old. When they entered the study, they were randomly divided into two groups.

"One was the aerobic exercise group," Kramer says. "Those were people who walked further and faster as time went on. And the others in our control group were in a toning, stretching and light-strengthening group."

Stanton was randomly assigned to the aerobic exercise group.

"Basically, it's walking a track in one of the gym facilities," Stanton says. He and the others in the aerobic group walked the track for about 40 minutes three times a week for a year. Stanton says he averaged about 3 miles each session. After each session, he was breathing hard and had worked up a sweat, he says.

The idea was for each participant to walk fast enough to reach aerobic exercise level, Kramer explains, which is generally considered to be 70 percent of one's maximum heart rate.

Walkers Fared Better

All the participants in the study had MRI brain scans done before the study began and again a year later when the study ended. Then the researchers analyzed the MRI data.

"What we found," Kramer says, "is that individuals in the aerobic group showed increases in the volume of their hippocampus."

The increase in volume — again for the aerobic but not for the non-aerobic group — was about 2 percent.

"The 2 percent increase we can think of as turning back the clock about two years," Kramer says.

The increased volume was found in the anterior, or front part, of the hippocampus. That's the area of the hippocampus that has been shown to grow as a function of exercise in several animal studies.

By comparison, "the individuals in the control group — in the toning and stretching group — lost about 1.5 percent [of their hippocampal volume]," Kramer says. "So we can think of it as about a 3.5 percent difference compared to those individuals who didn't benefit aerobically."

The results are small but suggestive. This finding shows that not only did the aerobic exercise protect against normal shrinkage, but also that new cells were added to the hippocampus. The researchers also saw a significant increase in that important brain-fertilizing chemical BDNF in the plasma of those in the aerobic exercise group — but not in the control group.

Impact On Memory

But did the growth in the hippocampus translate into improvements in memory? Both groups were given memory tests before and after the yearlong exercise program. Kramer says these tests looked specifically at a type of memory called "spatial memory," which records information about our environment, like the layout of the neighborhood or the interior of the grocery store.

At the start of the study, both the aerobic and the non-aerobic group scored similarly on the spatial memory test. But after the yearlong program, the group that did aerobic exercises had improved significantly on its spatial memory tests, bettering its own scores from a year earlier. The non-aerobic group had not improved in memory after a year of stretching, toning and lightweight lifting.

As for "semi-couch potato" Stanton, who'd been in the aerobic group, he says he didn't notice any improvement in his memory. He still has problems remembering people's names. But he did notice he had more physical stamina after the yearlong aerobic walking program.

In spite of this, Stanton says he still doesn't maintain a regular exercise regimen. He says while he knows it's good for him, he, like many of us, can't find the time. He's just too busy.

Arthritis Education

Arthritis is inflammation of one or more joints, which results in pain, swelling, stiffness, and limited movement. There are over 100 different types of arthritis, but the most common are osteoarthritis (“wear and tear” arthritis) and rheumatoid arthritis (inflammatory type of arthritis that happens when the body's immune system does not work properly).

Some of the symptoms of arthritis joint pain and progressive stiffness without noticeable swelling, chills, or fever during normal activities probably indicate the gradual onset of osteoarthritis.

Painful swelling, inflammation, and stiffness in the fingers, arms, legs, and wrists occurring in the same joints on both sides of the body, especially on awakening, may be signs of

rheumatoid arthritis. When experiencing any of these symptoms, see your doctor for an accurate diagnosis and treatment options.

                            

The earlier an accurate diagnosis is made and treatment started the better. Early treatment can often mean less joint damage and less pain. With rheumatoid arthritis, for example, some rheumatologists push for early arthritis treatment, debating if when you treat RA is as important as how you treat it. Your doctor may recommend a combination of treatments that may include medication, weight  management, exercise, use of heat or cold, and methods to protect your joints from further damage.

Arthritis and Exercise

A regular and varied exercise program can ease back pain and stiffness, strengthen muscle and bone, burn calories and improve flexibility. Exercise also results in increased energy, improved sleep and an overall feeling of well-being. A well rounded exercise program to help manage arthritis should include:

Range of motion exercises - Keep the body flexible by bending, stretching or swaying.

Strengthening exercises - Build the muscles that support the spine and other structures, such as the abdomen. Lift free weights or take a weight training class.

Aerobic or endurance exercise - Use large muscles to increase heart rate and strengthen heart and lungs. Dancing, walking, swimming and use of various exercise machines are examples of aerobic exercise.

www.arthritis.org