How Do Joint Problems Start?

Many people who develop arthritis (read for this, advance joint problems) will have long suffered niggles and odd bouts of moderate pain. Mostly, they will have ignored them, like the sports pro above, to get on with life. However, internally, it may be that the balance between destructive cleaning (mopping up) processes and healing (reconstruction work) is not perfect. Every now and then, the destructive elements become well and truly on top, and there is a sharp deterioration. But, repair and recovery appears to be a slower, longer process. Speaking to many arthritis sufferers, this is exactly what they relate, commenting typically

• "my back was really bad for a couple of weeks,.. I am better now, but it has taken me months to recover"
• "I've always the odd pain and stiffness in my knee after a session of golf. However, it got very painful for a few days in June. I thought it was because, I'd overdone things, and sure enough, things were better within a week or so. But when I look back, I have never quite recovered to what I was like before the painful bout. The stiffness is longer lasting and the odd pain is more aggravating now. I am told, I should expect it, as I am older, but certainly I did not dream being paired with a statement like that in my late forties!

This pattern of sharp deterioration and slow repair seems common. It also appears to be accompanied, by a longer term pattern of slow but sure deterioration. After each time of suffering a sharp deterioration, many sufferers I have spoken to tell me that they never quite got back to pre-attack level of fitness.

So what's going on internally?
At the time of attack, or sharp deterioration, the immune system kicks in a vehement clean up process. A few, T-cells of the immune system, incite (command) other immune cells called macrophages to attack the joints. Macrophages are like waste collectors inside your body. Their job is to get rid of any foreign matter and organisms like viruses. When one group of macrophages encounters such a problem, it signals this to T-cells, which then command more macrophages to enter the fray. T-cells, sometimes referred to as, memory T-cells, can get sensitised, or misguided, to react more strongly, if a past event caused this programming change. In these circumstances, the signals from the macrophages, triggers an abnormally large of immune reaction, that can involve attack upon fresh, healthy joint tissues, as the process spirals out of control.

But, why do you get the misguided T-cells in the first place? No one knows quite for sure. But the memory of the T-cells somehow gets altered, and becomes in lay terms hypersensitive to events. It may be that the original shift in programming may have happened as a response to a joint event like injury, infection or viral attack. However, the secondary trigger, which could be years later, may be different to the original. Many arthritis sufferers I have spoken to remind me of the injury they had had in the past, sometimes as long as twenty years ago!

This is why it is particularly important for those people who push their joints to the limit to proactively manage their joints welfare. Pushing it to the limit is relative for active and sports people it may be playing on with injury or ignoring injury altogether. For others, whose joints are damaged already, it may simply be that not giving a joint adequate rest, means it is pushed beyond its short term recovery point.

Another curious thing is that the balance shift is localised. Again, many sufferers find that specific triggers like food, will affect specific joints leading to inflammation/pain, there only.

 

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