Arthritis is a disease that attacks
joint tissues. It can attack the smooth covering at the ends of your bones or
the cartilage and cause it to break down. This exposes the ends of the bones,
causing them to rub against each other and wear away. Since your hands have
joints at the wrists and fingers, arthritis targets them, causing pain, stiffness,
swelling, and eventually, loss of function and deformity.
The
saddest thing about arthritis is that preventing it from infecting your hands
is impossible. However, you can reduce the risk and manage it via treatment,
including surgery and other treatment methods.
What types of arthritis
affect the hands?
Many different types of arthritis
affect the hands. Check out these common ones:
Osteoarthritis
Also
referred to as “wear and tear” or degenerative arthritis, osteoarthritis
affects the hands more often than all other types of arthritis. It’s known for
causing the breakdown and wearing away of the cartilage. This means the ends of
bones are bound to rub each other without protection, causing pain, stiffness
and loss of function with time.
Osteoarthritis
typically attacks parts of your hands such as your wrist, thumb base joint, and
your fingers' middle and top joints. When the disease goes on untreated for a
long time, it can lead to the formation of bony lumps in your finger joints.
Rheumatoid
arthritis
This form
of arthritis is a chronic inflammatory disease that affects the hands,
causing the joint lining (synovium) to swell, become painful, stiff, and
eventually lose function if left untreated.
Rheumatoid
arthritis is an autoimmune disease. This means that your body's immune
system attacks its own healthy tissues.
Your
synovium produces the fluid that eases the sliding of the cartilage against
each other. With time, the inflammation destroys the cartilage, eroding the bone
itself.
When this
happens, the shape of the bones and alignment gets destroyed and weakens and
stretches the tendons and ligaments surrounding the bone.
Rheumatoid
arthritis typically attacks your wrists’ small joints, hands and fingers.
Psoriatic
arthritis
Psoriatic
arthritis is another common form of the disease known for attacking the
joints of your hands and skin (psoriasis). It causes joint pain, swelling and stiffness
in the mornings. It’s more or less like rheumatoid arthritis but may only
attack a couple of your fingers.
Are there
certain parts of the hand that arthritis attacks the most?
Yes, here are 4 parts of the hands
commonly attacked by arthritis:
1.
Your knuckles.
2.
The joint of the base of your thumb meets your wrist.
3.
Your fingers’ middle joints.
4.
Your fingers’ top joints closest to your nails.
Who has the
highest risk of getting arthritis of the hand?
You’re more
likely to develop any of the above types of arthritis in your hands if:
·
You’re an older person above 50 years of age for osteoarthritis and
from the ages of 35 and 50 for rheumatoid arthritis.
·
You’re overweight.
·
You’re a woman.
·
You’re white.
·
You had had hand injuries that resulted in hand bone or finger
dislocation or breakage.
·
Your genetic makeup is vulnerable to the development of arthritis.
The
takeaway
Seeing a doctor once you begin experiencing symptoms of
all forms of arthritis, including those of the hand, is the best way to get
ahead of the disease. Arthritis generally doesn’t discriminate when it strikes.
According to estimations from the Arthritis Foundation, 78 million people will have arthritis by the year
2040. What a shocking figure this is! So, ensure that you know and understand the dangers, causes and symptoms
of all types of arthritis as in my next post.
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