What on earth is Arthritis and Have It?

Find out should you have arthritis, and if so, what kind so you can address it effectively. That's a question you start asking when you feel pain in a shared. Then you wonder, is it within the joint cartilage, and what is actually cartilage anyway, and does that mean you have inflammation of your cartilage, and isn't that what arthritis is, and you didn't think you possessed a high arthritis risk but now you are not so sure..

OK. Let's determine arthritis first. Simply put, the word arthritis comes from the Greek word 'arthrum' this means joint. Add 'itis' at the finish and you've got 'arthritis'. Quite simply, 'arthritis' means 'inflammation of a joint' - the 2 are interchangeable.

Now that we've got a working arthritis definition, let's concentrate on what kind, because that gives you some ideas about how to approach it.

There are two main types of arthritis definition - infectious arthritis, also called rheumatoid arthritis, and non-infectious. Let's check out each one.

Infectious Arthritis: This refers inflammation of a new joint caused by any one or more infectious agents such as bacterias, viruses, parasites, or spirochetes. A lot of the more common ones are: gonococcal, pneumococcal, tubercular, staph, strep (which could be the infectious agent in rheumatic fever) and in modern years, Lymes, a spirochete.

This sort brings up another question, "Is rheumatoid arthritis infectious? " The answer isn't any, not technically, because arthritis only means inflammation from the joint. However, the infectious agent may be transmittable, as it is when it comes to gonorrhea, strep, staph or tuberculosis.

Realizing that your joint cartilage is currently being gobbled up or worn apart by some such bug, you are armed with the knowledge it is advisable to choose a strategy that invites those bugs to live on elsewhere, and when they complete, you can move to the second phase of your strategy, that involves repairing the damage.

Non-Infectious Rheumatoid arthritis: This refers to all additional causes of joint inflammation. For example 'traumatic arthritis' is a result of sudden or repeated stress on the joint, as in tennis shoulder, while 'post-traumatic arthritis' is the result of an injury such as a new bump or blow. 'Septic arthritis' is joint redness that results from toxicity of some sort - perhaps a food intolerance (wheat, apples, strawberries, heavy metals or pesticides, for example).