What is the difference between arthritis and arthrosis?
Many people confuse the names because they don't know the difference.
These diseases are characterized by joint damage, but there is a significant difference between them.
What's the Difference
Arthritis can affect any joint. In many cases, this disease is a consequence of arthritic lesions. This is one of the consequences of improper, untimely treatment of arthrosis.
For a more accurate understanding of both diseases, the differences are specific to each:
- Arthritis refers to various inflammatory changes in the joints;
- A more correct name for the second disease is osteoarthritis. It differs in that the lesion affects the cartilage tissue.
The mechanism of the course of 2 diseases
Arthritis - classification of varieties
Arthritis is the name of a specific group of joint diseases.
It is characterized by the manifestation of swelling, inflammation. The inflammatory process leads to the production of enzymes that have a detrimental effect on the joint, and eventually destroy it. In addition to inflammation, an adhesive substance appears in the joint itself - fibrin.
This is pain at rest and can be relieved by exercise. Getting out of bed in the morning, a person feels unbending, in order to remove this feeling he needs to disperse. Most often, the disease affects the upper and lower extremities.
There is a division of the disease: degenerative or inflammatory. This classification is based on the nature of the disease.
A disease in which articular cartilage is affected is called degenerative arthritis. Cartilage is used to connect and move bones.
There are several types of it:
- Osteoarthritis;
- Traumatic arthritis.
The inflammatory course of the disease is characterized by damage not to cartilage, but to connective tissue. Inflammation occurs in the inner space of the joint capsule.
Divide it into the following types:
- Caused by an infection;
- Rheumatic;
- Reactive plan;
- Gout.
To understand the difference between arthritis and arthrosis, one should make out how osteoarthritis is not similar to other diseases included in the concept of arthritis.
Stages of arthrosis progression
Osteoarthritis, but more precisely and more correctly, it will be called osteoarthritis, this is a chronic lesion of the joints, which deforms it over time. The main cause of deformity is irreversible damage to the cartilage tissue.
The specificity of the disease is that destructive processes affect the cartilaginous tissues, followed by a violation of their integrity.
Arthrosis is a disease in which there is a mechanical abrasion of the cartilage in the joint until it completely disappears. The bones are exposed, and already their friction occurs.
The disease is long-term, chronic.
There are 2 stages of its development:
- Primary, detected in 42% of patients. It occurs not due to joint injury, but due to excessive physical exertion or hard work. Men who have been engaged in manual labor for a long period are ill with it.
- Secondary, develops in more patients than the primary stage and is associated with the consequences of trauma, on the basis of which the mechanism of destructive processes is triggered.
Causes and Differences
Causes of arthritis
The main prerequisites of the disease can be ranked:
- Excessive exercise or work;
- Various infectious processes, including hidden ones;
- Any kind of allergic reaction;
- Permanent damage to the same joint;
- Disruptions in metabolism;
- Lack of vitamins;
- Immune system disorders;
- Post-traumatic syndrome;
- Hereditary predisposition.
Root causes and main signs of arthrosis
The background to this disease is not well understood. Only people of retirement age are ill. The disease is influenced by age characteristics.
Trauma is considered another version of arthrosis. The joint with her should be treated. If this does not happen, then after a few years signs of arthrosis damage appear.
Clinical presentation and differences in symptoms
Let's turn to a more detailed examination of the symptoms that accompany joint diseases.
Pain symptom. Arthrosis in the initial stage is not characterized by a constant strong manifestation of pain. It appears only with intense exertion or joint movement. When the load decreases or the movement stops, the pain goes away.
A person does not attach importance to such manifestations, allowing the symptoms to increase, and the disease to progress. Pain begins to appear even with light exertion. Decreases if a person takes a comfortable posture.
In the area of the affected joints, systemic aching pains occur. This can be associated with long walking, exercise, or physical activity.
Sometimes soreness is felt after a long period of rest of the affected joint. If it is arthritis, then the soreness manifests itself both at rest and during physical activity.
This disease torments a person in the predawn hours. Severe pain occurs between 3 and 5 am.
Crunchy sound. Dry crunch is associated with arthrosis. As the cartilage tissue breaks down, bone friction begins. The sound coarsens and intensifies, manifesting itself at the slightest movement of the diseased joint.
Demonstrate stiffness of movement. Arthritis strongly constrains the movement of both the joint affected by it, and there is a decrease in the overall mobility of the entire skeleton.
Disorder of the shape of the diseased joint. Both arthritis and arthrosis can deform a joint. But the deformation process itself occurs in different ways. With arthrosis, there is no redness or inflammation. The joint is not hot to the touch. Deformation is also called cold. Swelling can be expressed at the time of exacerbation of the disease, accompanied by aching pain.
Arthritis changes the joint, it becomes hot, redness and swelling appear. The pain is acute, occurs on palpation of the affected area, nodular formations can be palpated.
What the blood test will tell you about. Blood counts for arthrosis do not change. An increase in the number of leukocytes and a sharp increase in ESR are signs of inflammation that are observed in arthritis. Increased leukocytosis indicates that the body is susceptible to infection and inflammation occurs inside.
In the biochemical blood test for arthritis, there is an increased number of markers of inflammation, while in arthrosis they do not change significantly.
Location of pathology. Osteoarthritis affects the large joints of the body. These will be the knees, hip joints and spine. From this originate the names of the disease: gonarthrosis (damage to the knee joint), coxarthrosis (the hip joint is affected), spondyloarthrosis (the pathology is localized in the spine).
Arthritis, called rheumatoid arthritis, lack of (poor) mobility in the morning - one of the signs of rheumatoid arthritis. After waking up, a person feels stiffness in the area of the hands. The wrist joints are affected both one at a time and both at once. With rheumatoid or psoriatic arthritis, there may be signs of inflammation in the joints of the fingers - swelling (swelling) and redness.
There are a number of other signs that you can recognize arthritis.
If a finger on an upper or lower limb swells and turns red, arthritis may be suspected. Arthritis is manifested by severe pain in the knees and ankles. Pain can also occur in the big toes.
It goes along with swelling and redness of the joint. Pain symptoms occur regularly, suddenly increasing, and then disappearing. Arthritis of an infectious origin is accompanied by an increased body temperature, general fatigue, a person breaks through sweat, chills, all bones ache and ache.
Inflammatory processes affecting the joints have a negative effect on important internal organs, the heart, kidneys and liver.
Additional signs of arthrosis:
- Aseptic necrotic areas;
- Strong muscle tension;
- Partial immobilization of the affected joints;
- Slow resorption of cartilage tissue, bones and friction between them;
- Inflammatory processes in the areas of tissue surrounding the painful joint.
Influence of the patient's gender and age on the presence of joint disease
Who is affected by arthritis
The percentage of arthritis cases is low and amounts to 2% of the entire population of the world.
Women “35-50 years old” are more susceptible to it.
Small joints are affected more often.
Whom the disease overtakes
Osteoarthritis does not spare the elderly, regardless of whether it is a woman or a man. Pensioners suffer from illness after retirement. The total number of cases is about 20% of all inhabitants of the Earth.
Different diseases - different methods
The specialists in charge of treatment are called orthopedic trauma surgeons. Arthritis requires treatment from different specialists.
Arthrosis and how to deal with it
Painful sensations are relieved for a short time with the help of anti-inflammatory drugs. But they have no effect on the course of the disease.
The main goal of the treatment is the regeneration of cartilage tissue. The main drugs that help to do this are chondoprotectors.
With the help of these drugs, it is possible to cope with inflammation of the joints, to regulate the metabolism in the muscles and to restore damaged areas.
If conservative treatment does not give positive dynamics, arthroplasty can be used.
Its essence lies in the fact that surgery is performed to replace the diseased joint. Arthrosis is a serious and incurable disease, because the ongoing processes are irreversible.
The patient must follow the doctor's recommendations on proper nutrition and remedial gymnastics - this is an obligatory stage of treatment. Gymnastics, medication treatment, therapeutic measures - all this leads to a positive effect.
What drugs and prescriptions does the doctor give to the patient?
For uncomplicated conditions, the prescriptions will be as follows:
- Hormone therapy;
- Medicines aimed at relieving inflammation;
- Pain relievers;
- Manual therapy, massage sessions;
- Set of exercises;
- Physiotherapy - with the help of ultrasonic waves and the use of thermal methods.
The complicated course of the disease will require additional medication. Sometimes doctors insist on removing the problem surgically.
Who needs a surgeon's service? Patients with a completely destroyed joint that cannot be restored need a complete replacement. Depending on the degree of joint destruction, both full and partial replacement are used.
Treatment for arthritis
It all depends on what form the disease has taken. The methods of therapy will be different, they can be combined, changed, choosing what will give the desired result in the treatment.
Lifestyle Recommendations:
- Adequate nutrition,
- Avoiding alcoholic beverages
- Decrease in physical activity.
Of the drugs, antibiotics are prescribed and anti-inflammatory drugs are injected into the joint.
Moderate gymnastics and physical therapy are helpful in treatment.
The main thing in treatment is to remove the inflammatory process and improve the body's resistance. They use vitamin preparations, diet food. It includes seafood, dairy and poultry.
Arthritis is a direct contraindication to sunbathing. Wearing shoes with large heels can aggravate the course of the disease, exclude it from your wardrobe.
Illness imposes its own prohibitions: alcohol, hard physical work must become a thing of the past. Health is too expensive to disregard doctors' recommendations!
Predicted disease outcomes
Diseases differ in their possible endings.
Arthritis is completely curable if its cause is eliminated.
Osteoarthritis is a chronic sluggish disease that does not give a chance for full recovery.
Simple Folk Remedies
In addition to drug treatment, it is useful to use reliable recipes of traditional medicine. Often, even doctors advise their patients to combine traditional medicine with folk medicine. This will speed up the healing process.
When treating arthritis, it is important to rethink your daily routine and diet. These 2 essential lifestyle pillars, if properly organized, can significantly influence the healing process.
Below are 6 rules that you can follow to help a patient:
- Observe the correct diet. Revise the menu so that it is possible to normalize the amount of nutrients, vitamins and microorganisms consumed per day.
- In order to normalize the diet, it is useful to saturate the daily menu with fresh vegetables and fruits, and it is better to exclude salty foods altogether, or use little salt during cooking.
- Avoid hot spices in ready-made products and in home cooking.
- Refuse to use foods from which, in a particular case, a certain person is rapidly gaining excess weight. These foods include meals that are high in carbohydrates.
- It is important to adjust the weight. If there are extra pounds, then it is useful to get rid of them as quickly as possible, because this has a negative effect on the lower limbs due to the heavy load.
- Stop drinking alcohol because it is negative for the body and helps the rapid development of drug rejection.
Among folk remedies, recipes are especially effective:
- The use of birch buds is helpful in treating arthritis. They are poured with boiling water and the resulting mixture is brought to a boil, wrapped in a warm cloth and allowed to brew. Take half a glass three times a day before meals.
- The burdock root is crushed, put into a jar and poured over with vodka. Insist in a dark place, regularly shaking the contents of the container. The resulting solution is smeared with the place in which the pain is most intense.
Home remedies and nutritional habits
In case of arthrosis, it is useful to saturate the daily menu with oily fish. The omega 3 acids contained in it quickly eliminate the inflammatory process, relieve pain. As an alternative, we recommend using fish oil, which is no less effective than oily fish.
Milk and dairy products are good for you, but skim foods are best. Cheese and cottage cheese should be sufficiently saturated with calcium. The daily diet should contain enough fresh fruits and vegetables.
In case of arthrosis, make sure that the body receives enough vitamins. For this it is useful to drink a course of vitamins. Preference should be given to drugs whose action is complex. Some vitamins help in faster absorption of others. There are such complexes on sale in which this moment is taken into account. This helps to ensure that vitamins are quickly absorbed, and salt deposits do not occur in the joints.
Proper nutrition, weight regulation and constant monitoring of the state of the skeletal system will allow you to cope with the disease, but exclude cases of relapse in the future.
Traditional medicine offers ways to fight the disease:
- Exercise and exercise regularly. You do not need to strain too much, sports should be moderate and bring only pleasure from their performance.
- It is useful to go swimming or just do various exercises in the water.
- Compresses are effective. With the development of the inflammatory process, warm options are useful, and cold, for example, ice, is suitable for relieving pain.
- Healing baths with an anti-inflammatory process are especially useful in the fight against this disease. For them, medicinal plants such as eucalyptus, calendula, sandalwood oil, St. John's wort are suitable.
Recommended Orthopedic Appliances
Knee pads are used to combat these diseases. Patients who used them noted that they really helped to cope with painful sensations along with other methods of dealing with the disease.
The choice of devices is varied, so a model is selected that is suitable for a particular patient, taking into account the course of his disease.
Each of the models has its own specific purpose. If you make a mistake with the choice, then the device will not bring results due to the fact that it will simply be impossible to wear it.
A closed knee brace is a device that covers the lower limb around it. They are made of elastic material, in some models an additional layer of insulation is provided. The option is good when pain occurs constantly in different places. They are aimed at all-round anchoring of the knee part of the leg. Provides significant relief while walking.
Open models have a cup cutout. They help with walking, relieve pain when bending the leg. They are useful for people who need to move up the stairs. The models have a rigid frame, they are made of elastic material. These devices help maintain the shape and position of the leg.
Disease Prevention
As a preventive measure, it is useful to take care of a healthy lifestyle. Moderate exercise on a regular basis is beneficial. Quitting smoking, drinking alcoholic beverages will significantly reduce the likelihood of developing these serious diseases.
It is much easier to prevent the development of any disease than to waste time, effort and money on its treatment. If we talk about arthritis and arthrosis, then for prevention it is useful to treat all types of infectious diseases on time and completely; untimely treatment of these diseases can soon provoke the development of serious problems with the lower extremities.
Make sure that the body is supplied in sufficient quantities of all the variety of vitamins. Avoid hypothermia, dress for the weather. Make sure that the joints are loaded to the extent that is permissible. It shouldn't be excessive. Overweight people. It is generally better to get rid of extra pounds as soon as possible, because they have a negative effect on the state of the whole organism.
Diets should be planned so that sufficient nutrients are supplied to the body.