A stiffness, rigid joints, painful movements, discomfort and inability to stay in one position longer than 5 minutes because of joint pain are the reason why you should visit some specialist to ascertain whether it is not some serious joint disease. Seasonable examination and diagnosis allows to start the necessary treatment, protecting you from development of disease.

A pain in joints is serious symptom to which you have to pay attention, thinking about your health. The sooner a cause of joint pain will be diagnosed, the bigger is possibility to avoid different complications. Joint pain can be connected with some trauma or other temporary cause, but it also can be a symptom of some chronic disease, like osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, gouty arthritis and others.

Eva has diagnosis – rheumatoid arthritis, and she is 31 years old. “First symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis appeared when I was 17 – accumulation of liquid in knee joints and pain in both knee joints after some time. I did not think that it is something serious. This disease changed my life. Today I can not do many things, and there is severe stiffness in my joints in mornings. Taking into account that several of my joints are deformed, I have movement disorders as well – I am limping during walking.”

Tanya is 40 years old, and when she was 19, she got diagnosis – ankylosing spondylitis. It was the moment when the ballet played a big role in her life. For Tanya it was continuous pain with whom she was forced to live. “At that moment I understood that I will not be a ballerina. When I was 24, doctors announced that my hip has to be replaced. After operation I was depressed, worried, and frightened. Despite the fact that the ballet has disappeared from my life, it is still with me because dancing taught me a discipline. Because of discipline I retrieved a control over my movements, and also pain decreased.”

Osteoarthritis is common chronic disease of joints when because of inflammation process a layer of joint cartilage decreases. It is inflammation is bones that are forming joints. This disease usually starts in the age of 40-50 years, but it can affect young people as well. Osteoarthritis develops very slowly and causes pain of damaged joints as well as stiffness and swelling. It can develop in almost any synovial joint, but most often it affects joints that are the most heavily laden – hips, knees, and wrists.

Rheumatoid arthritis is chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease which is caused by immune system. Because of unknown reasons joint tissues are giving signals to immune system about some changes in these tissues, but immune system causes inflammation in joints and in whole organism, damaging joints and other organs. This this disease can affect people of any age, but most often it affects people who are 25 to 60 years old. Women have three times higher risk of this disease than men.

Ankylosing spondylitis is chronic autoimmune inflammatory disease of joints which is caused by residue of calcium salts in spinal cords. In this process may join also big joints of arms and legs. Pain appears mainly in those places where tendons and ligaments are connected to bone, for example, in heels, in sides of knee joints, or on back surface of sacrum. This disease most often affects younger people who are 20-40 years old, but men are affected approximately ten times more often.

Gout is illness of metabolism that is connected with accumulation of uric acid salts in organism and their sedimentation in joints, hypodermic and other places. Gout usually affects people of average age (40-50 years), but men are affected most often. Gout is not characteristic for youngsters, because their metabolism is active. A cause of gouty arthritis may be inborn defects of metabolism – there is enhanced formation of uric acid in organism, but there is not enough enzyme that transforms uric acid in soluble compound. At the same time there is reduced kidney ability to eliminate uric acid from the body.