Joints are important parts of your body that allow your skeletal system to move. Some joints include your hips, knees, elbows, skull, and shoulders. Given the role they play, experiencing pain can be uncomfortable and impact your ability to complete everyday tasks.
If you have a painful joint, Eastshore Healthcare offers natural, non-surgical pain management to provide you with the long–term solution you’ve been searching for.
What is a joint?
A joint is where bones meet and connect to your skeletal system to facilitate movement and support. There are three primary types of joints: fibrous, cartilaginous, and synovial.
Fibrous joints include the cranium in your skull and are generally immovable, while cartilaginous joints offer partial mobility, as seen between our pubic bones. Synovial joints stand out for their free movement capabilities, thanks to the synovial fluid they contain. Common examples are our knees, shoulders, hips, and elbows.
What is joint pain?
Joint pain or discomfort often manifests in the spine, knees, feet, hips, and hands. The pain can be intermittent or constant. In the case of acute joint pain, it may come fast, but it’s short lived, or like in chronic joint pain, develops slowly and causes long-term issues.
Symptoms
Joint pain can manifest in various ways, with symptoms ranging from mild discomfort to severe pain that hinders daily activities. While the exact symptoms can vary based on the underlying cause, some common indicators of joint pain include:
- Discomfort, aches, or soreness in the affected joints.
- Swelling around the joints, often due to fluid accumulation.
- Pain persists for over three days.
- Redness and warmth in the affected area.
- Stiffness, which may be more pronounced in the morning.
- Reduced range of motion.
- A feeling of heat or warmth in the joint.
- Difficulty in moving the affected joint or complete immobility.
- Chronic pain that develops gradually.
- Acute pain that arises swiftly, often due to injuries.
- Tenderness when the joint or surrounding area is pressed.
Causes of joint pain
Joint pain can arise from various conditions and factors. Here’s a comprehensive list of potential causes based on the information from the provided sources:
- Osteoarthritis: This is the most common form of arthritis, which causes the protective cartilage between bones to wear away, leading to pain and stiffness. It often develops with age and is considered a “wear and tear” disease.
- Rheumatoid arthritis: This is an autoimmune disorder where the immune system attacks the joint capsule lining, causing inflammation and joint pain.
- Bursitis: This is the inflammation of the fluid-filled sacs (bursae) that cushion joints. It’s often caused by overuse and can affect hip, knee, shoulder, or elbow areas.
- Gout: It’s a form of arthritis resulting from the crystallization of uric acid in the joints. This leads to swelling and severe pain, commonly in the big toe.
- Viral infections: Certain infections can lead to joint pain. For instance, the hepatitis C virus can cause complications resulting in joint pain.
- Injuries: Direct injuries to the joints, such as fractures, sprains, or strains, can lead to pain. Overuse or excessive effort can also result in joint injuries.
- Tendinitis: Inflammation of the tendons (which are the bands connecting bones to muscles). It’s often caused by overuse and can affect areas like the elbow, heel, or shoulder.
- Strains and sprains: Overstretching or tearing muscles (strains) or ligaments (sprains) can cause joint pain.
Joint pain risk factors
Aside from the above causes, you’re also at a higher risk of suffering from joint pain based on the following:
- Family history: Genetic predisposition can play a role. If family members have arthritis or other joint-related conditions, you might be at a higher risk.
- Age: As one ages, the risk of many types of arthritis, including osteoarthritis, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis, increases.
- Gender: Some types of arthritis, like rheumatoid arthritis, are more prevalent in women, while conditions like gout are more common in men.
- Previous joint injury: An injury to a joint, even if it occurred years ago, can increase the risk of arthritis in that particular joint.
- Obesity: Excess weight puts additional stress on joints, especially those that bear weight, like the knees, hips, and spine. This can accelerate wear and tear, leading to arthritis.
Joint pain treatment
For those experiencing joint pain, several home care techniques can be effective in providing relief:
- Protect: Wrap or brace the joint to safeguard it.
- Rest: Avoid activities causing pain and give the joint a break.
- Ice: Apply ice to the joint for about 20 minutes, several times daily.
- Compress: Wrap your joint with an elastic to compress the joint.
- Elevate: Raise the joint over your heart level to reduce swelling.
You can also try heat therapy with heating pads, joint immobilization, weight management, physical therapy, and supplements. Chondroitin and glucosamine supplements can help.
Natural Pain Relief for Achy Joints
Pain relief and pain management are two different things, and we focus on relieving your pain so you can put it behind you and continue with your life without restrictions. In a conventional pain management system, medication like nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs is used to cover up or mask the pain, dulling the pain receptors in your brain.
When you take this approach, you never really get to the underlying cause of the pain, and it can even cause more damage to the joints over time because you are using them while they are still damaged.
This kind of knee pain management system can go on indefinitely, but it doesn’t have to if you focus your attention on alleviating the pain by fixing the root cause of it. The only reason you’re in pain in the first place is because there is damage to the bone, cartilage, or tissue.
When you embark on a program of natural pain relief, that underlying cause will be taken care of, and the pain will go away because the problem that caused it will go away.
How Eastshore Healthcare can help
While the above home care treatment options help, they are nothing close to a long-term solution. But instead of undergoing surgery, our health experts use regenerative medicine procedures to utilize the body’s innate healing mechanisms to help the body repair and replenish underlying tissue damage. Our doctors use a variety of regenerative cells that are administered through injections.
Once injected into an area needing healing, these regenerative cells home in on inflation and go to work conducting the surrounding tissues to heal and proliferate. Healing the underlying tissue damage results in pain relief.
If you have questions about our treatment procedure or want to book a session, contact us at (717) 652-5550.