Why do the joints of the hands and feet hurt?

Why do joints hurt? With such a question, a large number of patients turn to the doctor or try to find the answer on their own. Unfortunately, this complaint is not specific and may indicate a pathology with various mechanisms and causes of development.

We will try to identify the most common causes of joint pain and find out how to treat common diseases.

Symptoms

Before discussing the immediate causes of pain, it is worth learning more specifically about the symptoms of diseases of the musculoskeletal system. The doctor, starting a diagnostic search, will find out exactly how the joints hurt, so the specialist will quickly find the causes of the disease.

By the nature of sensations, pain can be:

• Pain.
• Cut.
• Very full.
• Compressive.

Pain in the joints of the arms and legs varies in intensity. Aching and weak pain indicates chronic diseases. If the joints hurt a lot, the sensations do not allow movements, then the process is acute.

pain rhythm

Symptoms of all diseases of the joints of the hands and feet can be divided according to the rhythm of pain: mechanical or inflammatory. Mechanical pain has the following characteristics:

• It grows in the afternoon.
• Morning stiffness is not typical.
• Strongly felt after exercise.
• At rest, the pain hurts or is completely absent.
• Onset: a particular type of pain at the time of the start of movement.

The inflammatory rhythm is characteristic of synovitis of the joints of the arms and legs of various origins. The symptoms are as follows:

• Morning stiffness of the body or certain parts of the arms and legs for more than 30 minutes.
• The pain increases at night and early in the morning.
• With movement, the symptoms become less intense, the stiffness of the body decreases.
• In this rhythm of pain from stiffness and pain, anti-inflammatory drugs are helpful.

Other symptoms

Pain in the joints of the arms and legs, depending on the cause of development, is accompanied by one or another manifestation. Why there was pain in the joints can often be determined by additional symptoms:

• Restriction of mobility of the arms or legs.
• Stiffness in the extremities.
• Swelling in the joints of the arms and legs (swelling in the elbow joint).
• Local fever and redness of the skin.
• General weakness, fever.
• Visible skin lesions on arms, legs, trunk.
• Manifestations of other organs.

Depending on the symptoms that accompany the pain in the joints of the arms and legs, the doctor will determine why the disease has occurred.

joint diseases

Pain in the joints of the arms and legs can be caused by diseases that have a completely different origin and mechanism of development. However, the most common causes of such symptoms can be identified:

1. Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease of cartilage and bone tissue. In this case, the pain in the joints is mechanical in nature, during the period of exacerbation an inflammatory component joins.
2. Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease associated with a joint being attacked by its own immune system cells. Joint pain has a clearly inflammatory rhythm.
3. Reactive arthritis is inflammation caused by an infection in another organ. It often occurs with hepatitis and urinary tract infections.
4. Infectious arthritis - associated with the entry of microbes into the joint.
5. Injuries and fractures. Diagnosis is not difficult due to the presence of trauma in the history.
6. Damage to ligaments and intra-articular formations. The soft structures of the joints also cause joint pain when damaged.
7. Rheumatic diseases. A large group of causes that lead to autoimmune damage to the joints: systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatism, Bechterew's disease, Reiter's syndrome and others.
8. Gout and other metabolic arthropathies. Often symptoms of damage to the musculoskeletal system are associated with the deposition of various pathological substances in the joints. In gout, they are salts of uric acid.
9. Psoriatic arthritis: The cause of this disease is unknown. The body's own antibodies affect the tissues of the joints, internal organs and skin. A frequent manifestation of the disease is dermatitis - peeling of the skin on the extensor surfaces of the extremities.

This list represents the most common causes of diseases of the musculoskeletal system.

Joint pain can also be caused by vascular disorders and neurological diseases. The treating physician must determine the ultimate cause.

Diseases of the knee joints.

Knee pain is one of the most frequent complaints to the rheumatologist. Why does the knee hurt? This element of the musculoskeletal system daily bears huge loads of the whole body, performs a wide range of movements and has a complex structure.

The knee joint hurts with various diseases, some of them have already been listed above, others are specific to this joint.

"Knees hurt: how to get rid of them? "- First of all, consult a doctor. Instrumental diagnostics help to find out why the knees hurt, but a presumptive diagnosis is made on the basis of complaints and examinations.

Pain in the knee joint most often occurs due to the following reasons:

1. Gonarthrosis - osteoarthritis of the knee joint. This cause is the most common mechanism for knee pain. The joint is subjected to daily loads, which are the main risk factor for osteoarthritis.
2. Meniscopathy. The menisci are layers of cartilage within a joint. When a knee injury occurs, it is these structures that are often damaged. Joints ache severely with meniscopathy, pain occurs when trying to move. Treatment of pathology is operational.
3. Arthritis of various origins. Pain in the knee joint with arthritis is inflammatory in nature, they may be associated with an infection of the joint itself or another organ. Knee joint pain can also occur with rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases.
4. Gout. The knee joint is not the most common location for gouty arthritis. But this joint can still be affected by the disease. Pain in the knees is accompanied by the presence of subcutaneous tophi - an increase in the level of uric acid in the blood.
5. Inflammation of the tendons - tendonitis. Pain in the knee joint is very often associated with soft tissue damage. When a microtraumatism occurs in the tendon or ligament, pain occurs in the knee, it is associated with a local inflammatory reaction. Symptoms are aggravated by exercise.
6. Circulatory disorders. Vascular thrombosis, thrombophlebitis, varicose veins can cause knee pain. These problems usually occur in postmenopausal women, as well as in people who often load the joint.
7. Baker's cyst and other diseases of the joint bag. The knee joint has a complex structure, its synovial membrane has inversions and pockets. Knee pain can be caused by local inflammation of the joint capsule or by the accumulation of inflammatory fluid in the popliteal space.
8. Tumors. Neoplasms rarely affect the joint area. Very often, pain in the knee associated with tumor growth occurs when there are metastases from another organ in the joint. In this case, the diagnosis is known and cancer treatment is already underway.

With these and other diseases, a person's knees hurt, what to do in a particular situation, the attending physician will tell.

Knee pain is not always a sign of a serious pathology, but worrying about your health does not hurt.

Diagnosis

Before prescribing treatment for joint pain, your doctor will need to make a definitive diagnosis. To do this, you will perform several mandatory diagnostic procedures. The exam standard includes:

• General analysis of blood and urine: will indicate the presence or absence of an inflammatory reaction.
• Biochemical blood test - assesses the function of the liver and kidneys, the state of protein, fat and carbohydrate metabolism.
• X-ray of the affected joints. The X-ray is performed in several projections and allows detecting bone pathology.

Unfortunately, in most cases, these research methods are not enough to make a diagnosis. In this case, additional methods apply:

1. CT scan - allows you to detect even the smallest damage to bone tissue.
2. Magnetic resonance imaging - the method perfectly visualizes all soft tissues, including ligaments and menisci, tumors, cysts and other pathological formations.
3. Ultrasound of the joints - detects abdominal and solid pathological formations, can measure the speed of blood flow in the vessels.
4. Arthroscopy is the introduction of a camera into the joint cavity. One of the most accurate research methods.
5. Diagnostic puncture - a fluid is drawn from the joint cavity into the syringe, which is subjected to examination.

These diagnostic tools allow you to make the correct diagnosis with a high probability. Many procedures are expensive or have contraindications, so the need for investigation is determined individually.

Treatment

How to treat joints? For joint pain, there is a large number of popular remedies, techniques and recipes. The attending physician will help you choose the correct methods of therapy.

All means and methods of therapeutic effects can be divided into several groups, each of which will be discussed below.

Pharmacotherapy

For joint pain, medications are often used exclusively. This is not the correct approach, it is better to use a complex treatment. In which, however, drugs play a fundamental role.

The most used drugs:

1. Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
2. Non-narcotic and opioid analgesics.
3. Muscle relaxants.
4. Glucocorticosteroids.
5. Chondroprotectors.
6. cytostatics.
7. vitamins

From what each specific drug helps, the treating physician must explain to the patient.

In vascular diseases, other drugs are prescribed. If you have diseases of the vessels of the lower extremities, and at the same time the joints of the legs hurt, what to do and what treatment to choose is decided by the attending physician.

Physiotherapy

The use of various physiotherapeutic procedures complements medical treatment.

The following techniques help with joint pain:

• Electrophoresis.
• Phonophoresis.
• Acupuncture.
• paraffin applications.
• Baths of Rodón.
• Mud therapy.
• Magnet therapy.

These and other techniques allow you to increase blood flow in the affected joint, relieve swelling and increase the intensity of metabolic processes.

therapeutic immobilization

For joint pain in the acute period, therapeutic immobilization is often prescribed. This method involves the use of bandages, corsets and orthoses on the affected joint.

You cannot wear the bandage for a long time, because the muscles under the orthopedic design atrophy from inactivity. However, during heavy loads, the support of immobilizing products is very useful.

exercise therapy

Physiotherapy plays a key role in the treatment of any pathological process in the musculoskeletal system. Gymnastics allows you to adapt the joint to the load, restore muscle strength, improve blood circulation and relieve swelling.

The intensity, the time of exercise depends largely on the nature and severity of the disease. You should start the exercises with breathing exercises and warm-up of small muscles.

Morning exercises for 20-30 minutes a day should be supplemented with swimming, Nordic walking and other aerobic activities.

Massage

Massage procedures perfectly relieve the patient from joint pain. What is the massage method for? Procedures increase blood circulation, relieve swelling and reduce pain. You need to entrust the implementation of this procedure to a specialist and undergo a massage after performing a series of exercises.

Surgery

The key role, and sometimes the only one, in the treatment of joint pathology is surgical intervention. Thus, the consequences of injuries, severe degrees of degenerative diseases, complications of joint pathology are treated.

The operation can be performed in various volumes: from plasty to prosthetics of the affected joint. Indications for intervention are determined by the patient's attending physician together with the surgeon or traumatologist.

Treatment with folk remedies.

Traditional medicine recipes are still popular in our country. It must be said that treatment with folk remedies is not a tried and tested method, and patients use it at their own peril and risk.

For the treatment of pathology of the musculoskeletal system, the following folk remedies are used:

1. Bay and cabbage compresses.
2. Sunflower root decoctions.
3. Ointment from a golden mustache.
4. Application inside the egg shell.
5. Crushed chestnut compresses.
6. Rye grains and other cereal structures in the form of decoctions.
7. Boiled rice.
8. Sodium bicarbonate.

If you decide to use one of the recipes of traditional medicine, consult your doctor first.