TYPES OF JOINT PAINS

The #22 Different Types of Joint Pain You Must Know

What is a Joint Pain?

Human joints are highly sensitive. In our routine, you do numerous jobs causing regular or abrupt movement of your body joints. Sometimes, you use some of your body joints excessively; you hurt your body; or at old age, your bones become fragile, causing joint pain. Pain can occur at several body joints such as hips, toes, knees, ankles etc.

Joint pain is termed as arthralgia taken from Greek roots, it literally means joint pain. Generally, non-inflammatory joint pain is referred as arthralgia, whereas inflammatory pain is classified as arthritis. Joint pain is a kind of discomfort, aches or soreness.

There are multiple methods used for the treatment of joint pain. The treatment depends upon the intensity, age, and stage of disease. It includes the use of antibiotics, surgeries, and pain killer medication.

In the following discussion, an overview of several types of joint pain is presented to enhance the awareness about this disease.

Types of joint pain

1. Arthritis
Arthritis means joint inflammation. It is taken from Greek and Latin words. There are chances of arthritis when a person feels trouble in moving, and his body becomes stiff. Sometimes, it causes severe pain and swelling of the joints. It even results in disability in the people over fifty years age. The studies conducted by Centers for disease and Prevention (CDC) reveal that around 50 million people in the United States are victims of arthritis. According to some other estimates, 16% of the Canadians over the age of 15 are diagnosed with arthritis.

2. Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis is the common type of arthritis that causes deterioration of joint cartilage and the underlying bone. It is most common in middle ages. This disease can cause severe joint pain in hip or knee. In some cases, this disease causes breakdown and eventual loss of the cartilage joints. The National Health Service of the United Kingdom states that approximately 8.5 million people are affected by this disease.

3. Gout
Gout means drop of something; it is a kind of joint pain that causes problems in metabolism of the uric acid. In some cases, it causes deposition of chalk-stone in joints. It is a growing health problem and cause severe pain. It can initiate as a sudden pain.

4. Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA)
It is a joint pain that affects the joints of hands and feet. It is a chronic inflammatory disorder that affects the lining of your joints, unlike the osteoarthritis which causes a wear and tear damage. It causes swelling causing bone erosion.

It may take the form of immune disorder in which antibodies attack own healthy tissues. It not only damages the linings of joints, but also other organs such as skin and eyes. In the following figure, the effect of this disease on the body joints is illustrated. In the first figure, normal human joint is shown, whereas in the second, joint bone loss due to rheumatoid arthritis is shown.

5. Post-Traumatic Arthritis
This type of joint pain is caused by the wearing out of injured joint. A minor injury or fracture may change the mechanics of a joint. This change gradually starts rubbing and wear and tear of joints. Excess body weight or weak bones due to overage can accelerate the wear and tear.

6. Migratory Arthritis
Migratory arthritis is a kind of joint pain, which spreads from one joint to the other joint. It is characterized by joint pain and stiffness. First joint feels better and other starts paining. It may affect the people of any age group.

7. Aching Joints
It is a type of joint pain in which inflammation occurs inside the joints. It causes the irritation of the nerve endings. It sometime damages the cartilage, which has no nerve endings. Carrying heavy loads may accentuate this.

8. Joint Tenderness
It is such a kind of joint pain that increases upon pressing the painful joint. In other cases, when you move the joint, it becomes painful. It can be initiated by any kind of injury, inflammation or infection. Most often, it is caused by Arthritis. Many symptoms are associated with joint tenderness such as joint stiffness, joint swelling and joint redness.

9. Joint Swelling
When there is a buildup of fluid in the soft tissues around a joint, it causes joint swelling. It can be caused by the various factors such as injury, intense activities, playing sports etc.

10. Stiff Joints
Joint swelling generally associates joint stiffness. This kind of joint pain results from an injury. In severe cases, the painful joints become too much rigid resisting any kind of the movement. The two surfaces of joints start rubbing against the each other.

11. Bursitis

It is inflammation of a bursa located in a shoulder joint. It causes irritation. It is a kind of a sac that is filled with a kind of lubricating fluid. This lubricating fluid is located between the tissues of bones, muscles and tendons. This fluid helps decreasing rubbing, and friction. It is often caused by the repetitive, minor impact on the area. Age is also a factor because the human tissues become fragile and less elastic. Gardening, raking, carpentry, shoveling, painting are accentuates Bursitis.

12. Charcot Joint
This type of joint pain is also referred as neuropathic arthropathy. It causes deterioration of weight bearing joints of the body. The destruction of bones, re-absorption and deformity are its extreme cases.

13. Temporomandibular Joint Disorder
Temporomandibular joint dysfunction abbreviated as TMD is a kind of joint pain characterized by dysfunction of muscles of mastication and temopromandibular joints. This disease of joint pain restricts the muscle movement suffering the quality of life. Sometimes noise is generated from the movement of joints. It is more common in females the males. It has many factors. It is cured by the pain killers and behavioral therapies.

14. Joint Redness
Joint redness is a kind of joint pain characterized by redness of the skin over the affected joint. There might be various causes including joint injury, inflammation or any infection. In some cases, joint redness can be aggravated by skin infections or arthritis.

15. Inflammatory Joint Effusion
Joint effusion results from the buildup of fluid in the knee joint. More specifically, it effects from the increased fluid in synovial cavity of a joint. It is referred as inflammatory joint effusion when the knee joint becomes inflammatory. It is characterized by high White Blood Cells count in the range of 1,000 to 50,000 micro liters.

16. Non Inflammatory Joint Effusion
This type of joint pain may be infectious. The human knee appears turbid and culture is often positive. The WBC count acquire high level from 1,000 to 100,000 micro liters.

17. Hemorrhagic Joint Effusion
When blood accumulates in the joint cavity, this process is called as hemorrhagic joint effusion. This type of joint pain can be caused by the deficiency of the clotting factors or connective tissue disorders. In the extreme cases, it can cause joint destruction. However, in the normal cases, it results in pain and swelling. Lack of timely treatment of this joint pain has fatal consequences.

18. Ankle pain and Tendinitis
Tendinitis is also called a Jumper’s knee. This kind of joint pain causes pain and tenderness at the body surface of the joint. It may occur as inflammation of irritation of a tendon. Tendinitis is commonly occurs at shoulder and elbows. If tendinitis occurs at ankle, it turns into ankle pain. In the severe forms, it may cause the rupture of a tendon.

19. Avascular Necrosis (Osteonecrosis)
Avascular necrosis (AVN), also called osteonecrosis is specified as cellular death of bone components because of interruption of the blood supply. All of this procedure eventually causes the bone to collapse. Avascular necrosis mostly occurs in the upper leg.

20. Bunions

It is a painful swelling on the first joint of the big toe. It causes the lateral deviation of the great toe. The notions of enlargement of bone are erroneously called as bunions. Modified design footwear is required to mitigate the rubbing of toe with shoes.

21. Paget’s Disease
It is a chronic disease associated with joint pain. It creates an undesirable change in the bone tissues such as spine, skull or pelvis. It is generally observed in the elder people. It is also associated with the breast cancer causing inflammation of nipple.

22. Severe joint pain
Any kind of joint pain may turn into a severe pain, if it is untreated for a long time or one keeps on doing intense activities. Severe joint pain may be caused by any of above mentioned diseases. It can cause complete wearing of joints or damaging of tissues. There are various activities that increase pain such as swimming, gardening, shoveling, and kitchen works. When you are having severe joint pain you should go for proper and timely treatment. As advised, heavy activities should be suspended until the recovery.

Conclusion

In this short article, we have strived to give you awareness about various types of joint pain. The knowledge of joint pain can make you well equipped to cope with it and deal it out timely. An overview of several kinds of joint pain gives a picture of intensity and nature of this disease. There are very severe cases of joint pain that require regular treatment.