Rheumatoid Arthritis Support Group
Rheumatoid arthritis is a chronic, inflammatory, multisystem, autoimmune disorder. It is a disabling and painful condition which can lead to substantial loss of mobility due to pain and joint destruction. The disease is also systemic in that it often also affects many extra-articular tissues throughout the body including the skin, blood vessels, heart, lungs, and...
How do you know if everything that hurts at any given time is RA or if OA is developing? My Mom and sisters all have OA and not RA.
The mechanism for OA, is that whereever a joint is damaged, the body, for some excessive reason, runs to fix it, and over fills it, causing bone spurs and often wrecking the joint more than the original injury. So, every joint you have had an RA flare in, is liable to develop OA. And you can also have OA in a joint, that gets an RA flare. Not fun!
The thing about OA, is that almost everyone gets it somewhere. I think that by age 80, 97% of all people have OA somewhere. My mom wore out her hip golfing, the OA was bad, and she had to have it replaced. She thought she was doing a good thing to her body, walking the course every day, but the rotation from swinging the clubs caused the damage. of course, that included hitting balls on the driving range.
I have had terrible RA flares in my knees, lasting months in the early days of RA. Now, my knees need to be replaced, because the OA damage is getting so bad. Not fair!