Does osteoarthritis cause other health problems ?

jooms

"Wear and tear" may describe the initial damage but it is becoming more clear that inflammation is responsible for continued pathogenesis.

Additionally Dr. Virginia Byers Kraus suggests that osteoarthritis often leads to other medical conditions such as heart problems and diabetes 2. She seems to suggest that low grade inflammation is responsible. Could it also be lack of exercise?

Interesting to know whether any osteoarthritis readers here confer with her observations?

Airwave!

I’ve had wear and tear since I was young, is this not an illness? My doctor tells me I wouldn’t get a diagnosis of widespread arthritis today (curious as he gave it to me not two years ago?) it would just be put down to wear and tear. He says to have a diagnosis of arthritis is to have a sentence of infirmity put upon you with all the consequences that brings, to some extent I agree but how do we get around the question of medical challenges and where they have set their sights and the reality of such illnesses?

I was retired at 44, twenty years ago and the further you get from work the less money you have to pursue another life, You are essentially separated by time and finance from your peer groups and lead a less fulfilling life along with all the emotional, mental and physical issues that can crop up as a result.

No one will supplement our incomes just because we have arther on our backs! If you are born poor you will die poor along with the illnesses that poor lifestyles brings. I still feel that OA is the bridesmaid in life’s illnesses and with attitudes as above will remain so.

Twenty years ago the Parliamentary Labour Party were in power and promised to make arthritis a leading cause to be fought by their government, nothing happened, it was just political hype.

jooms

Sorry Airwave to hear about your long term disbility. Mine only 3 and half years suddenly one knee then another then hip. Major disruptions to life but ignored by NHS unless I phone. Very limited with treatment options so few phone calls. NHS do not prescribe CBD, do not do stem cell therapy, do not monitor/measure deterioration. Just regard it as progressive deterioration with joint replacement as the only and final solution.

Research and application is required. Finance from government and elsewhere. Pressure put on NHS and politicians only way.

Arthritis is a drain on economy (annually £3.43 billion affecting nearly 26 million people by 2030) which means fewer people able to work. Governments ignore the future to protect their presence. Sell promises for votes.

Airwave!

This is not the life I would have chosen, but (there’s always one!) working with what I have, I am happy so no need for feeling sorry for me. I would like some help but I always get told that it’s just more arthritis and what painkillers would I like. I try to stay away from the surgery, it’s less frustrating.

I think every doctor should experience pain and stiffness, it would give them a new outlook on life.

Right, back to my shed for some balsa bashing!

its a grin, honest! 😎

stickywicket

My gut feeling, based only on many years of OA, ushered in by RA, and my husband's OA, is that many incurable diseases can leave us open to other medical problems depending on how we deal with them.

If we overdo exercise that will make our arthritis worse but underdoing exercise, especially if combined with a sedentary lifestyle and comfort eating, will lead to other diseases whether or not we have arthritis.

My husband has recently had a hip replaced. It's bothered him for years but he has continued to play golf, walk and garden which has kept his muscles strong. The other hip, on x-ray, is in an even worse condition but he has little pain in it.

Your doc's theory is interesting. Could you provide a link to the research on which it's based?

jooms

Stickywicket.

Not my doctor but she researches arthritis and seems not to be limited by outdated concepts of this disease.

Worth looking at some of her other research (Drs name removed by moderator) 

Webmd is a site Versus Arthritis would not recommend, it's best to use sites with .ac or .edu as these are accredited sites carrying out accredited research in the UK and US. As @stickywicket says this research is based on 18 patients and the journal it is reported in is also not accredited like the bmj (British Medical Journal) YvonneH Admin

stickywicket

I’ve looked at the page on Web MD (a site I usually trust) and checked out the actual article on Science Advances. I could barely grasp a word of the latter as it’s written in Medicalese but I did, finally, find what I was looking for and, if I’ve understood it correctly (which I might not have done) I think this is a ‘study’ / ‘survey’ based on only 18 patients. If so, I don’t think it would be considered significant unless a much, much bigger study / survey corroborated the results.

It’s interesting and I guess it might, eventually, lead somewhere but I remember that when I was first diagnosed with RA by a very eminent Prof. of Rheumatology I was told a cure was ‘just around the corner’. That was in 1961. Don’t hold your breath and, more importantly, don’t dedicate too much of your life to hoping for this miracle. If it happens it’ll be great but, for most of us, life is about what we do outside these dream scenarios.

jooms

Stickywicket

1961! If they can fly people to the moon ......!

I don't know much about RA but being initiated by the immune system my guess the gut is the key to the problem, and to many others. The gut is, after all, the largest immunity organ in the body and the bacteria lining the intestine prevent compounds that promote inflammation from entering the blood system. Unfortunately many oral medications adversely affect the gut microbiota. I have, so far, avoided taking medications that I feel will harm my friendly gut symbionts.

Feed the bacteria, and the bacteria will feed you. After all, they know more than we do.

You may find this interesting [Site about using diet to reverse arthritis - link deleted]

Webmd is a site Versus Arthritis would not recommend, it's best to use sites with .ac or .edu as these are accredited sites carrying out accredited research in the UK and US. YvonneH Admin

stickywicket

That's very kind of you, jooms, though I confess I gave up on diet, herbal supplements, copper bracelets and the lot many years ago.

I think it's highly likely that the gut has a part to play but so do so many other things - genetic inheritance, diet in general, smoking, alcohol, hormones etc. I had asthmas as a child so there was my first auto-immune disease. I tried the Dr Colin Dong diet twice for 2-3 months each time. Basically similar to the one shown but I just got worse. DMARDS have been my salvation and I just trust in them now. I've always eaten sensibly (apart from the Dr Dong diet!) with lots of veg, little sugar or processed foods. I smoked briefly as a teenager and, when it was really bad, found that alcohol made it worse. Now, fortunately, it doesn't but I drink very little.

50 years ago, during my first pregnancy, I went into total remission. It was back as soon as he was born. No such luck with his brother. At the time they were trying to research why this sometimes happened but I don't think they found an answer.

We find partial solutions and improvements but research progresses necessarily slowly.One day....maybe.

Airwave!

Aahhh we’re back to my story of homemade yoghurt! Ever since I started eating it regularly (usually with garden fruit) I don’t suffer as much the dehydration effects of medicines and everything is regular! Now that is something to smile about! I have had one mild cold in the last three years (used to be once a month) and even that nasty virus thingy lasted a week with mild symptoms.

This is all purely anecdotal but it seems to work for me, doesn’t stop arther but at least I don’t have to put up with other things (coughs and colds and sneezes) as well which was miserable for most of my life.

Mike1

Does Osteoarthritis cause other health problems? Presumably apart from anxiety and depression?

Lilymary

My guess is that the causes of arthritis may be linked to other health issues, rather than the arthritis itself being the trigger. Gut biomes are getting a lot of attention at the mo, as causes of a whole range of stuff (including things like depression, diabetes, allergic responses, stress responses, inflammatory conditions and ME/CFS). I can see the logic in that, but this phase of research is still in the early stages and I can't face the radical diet changes being touted as “cure-alls”, other than the odd live yoghurt, fruit and veg and less processed foods, which let’s face it, seem to be put forward as the cure for most diet related conditions.

but as Stickywicket says, there a whole load of other triggers to be considered for arther: eg does the genetic code for arthritis also affect other parts of our physiology, is arther related to long term stress, to what extent is it auto-immune, and does that compromised immunology result in other conditions? The human body is so fantastically complex, that I often feel we’re still only touching at the edges of understanding the inter-relationships between so many systems and pathogens. Medicine has come such a long way in the last 100 years, but this is still only the beginning. With so many conditions still all we can do at the moment is treat the symptoms, but at least we are still working on it. I feel very blessed to be living in the U.K., medicine in so many parts of the world is treated with such deep superstition, side lined for faux “traditional remedies” and cultural/religious restrictions, even in parts of the US. So even without their response to Covid, God Bless the NHS! (And the scheming politicians can keep their grubby hands off it!)