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High Uric Acid Impacts Osteoarthritis

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Do you struggle with OA and pain? You may have no idea that you are dealing with osteoarthritis until you are diagnosed. Getting your OA diagnosed through your medical history, physical exams, x-rays, and more is pretty simple. However, predicting the way that it will manifest in each individual can be tough. The progression and how much it will get worse for each person is difficult to pin down ahead of time. Researchers now might have found an indicator that may help them with predictions, however. Could it be in the form of uric acid levels in high amounts?  Frequently associated with having gout (a different arthritis form), uric acid in high levels but no gout may indicate that their OA progresses faster than other people's might. This was in a 2017 Arthritis & Rheumatology research article. Learning About Uric Acid What is uric acid ? This is a substance that forms in the body naturally when purines are broken down. These are found in ...

Is Your Back Pain Gout?

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Could your back pain be gout? Back pain can be distracting and just painful. What's causing your lumbar to ache? It could be any number of things. Could your back pain be symptoms of gout ? Rheumatologists over the past decade have recorded more gout cases appearing in spines. This arthritis is a form of inflammation and it comes with back or neck pain, arm/leg tingling, or numbness, it could be not just pain-- it could be gout. Is Spinal Gout Common? Spinal gout is rare. A 2016 study in European Spine Journal documented just shy of 150 cases in medical journals describes. However, Theodore Fields (M.D.) suggests that spinal gout may be more common than expected. Early studies suggest there's more spine gout than previously thought. One explanation for low numbers is that doctors might not be looking for gout. He adds that patients with this type of gout typically have a history of having it in other locations. Gout will affect the jo...

Symptoms & Signs of Fibromyalgia

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What are the main signs of fibromyalgia? When it comes to fibromyalgia , the most common symptom that people experience is pain. The main side effect is believe to occur because of an increased sensitivity when it comes to pain stimuli. Pain can be caused as well by a variety of situations. These could be changes in the weather, various noises, and even stress. However, pain can also pop up totally unrelated to outside events too. With this condition, pain characteristically will show up in physical areas of the body that include the chest, arms, upper back, shoulders, neck, and buttocks. Localized areas,  called tender points, in the body might be tender when you touch them lightly as well. These are found in the hips, knees, shoulders, elbows, breastbone sides, and back of your head. What are other symptoms that are associated with having fibromyalgia? Being tired, having malaise, being fatigued Having poor quality or disturbances in your sle...

5 Tips for Getting Better Sleep With Arthritis

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When it comes to getting a good night's sleep, it can be tough. The normal stresses of everyday living, blue light and screen time at night, staying up too late, not getting quality sleep, waking up too early, and more can all contribute to making a decent night of sleep difficult to achieve. Add into the sleep equation some arthritis pain , and you might end up finding that you are situated on the sleep equation's short end more often than you would like. Pain-Sleep Connection You may not know it (or maybe you do), but sleep and pain are actually closely connected. When you experience pain throughout the daytime, it can affect the quality of sleep that you get at night for the worse. A bad night of sleep can also have a relationship with the pain and even increase it the following day. In order to go into sleep mode, the body and the mind must be able to gradually calm down. That can be tough to accomplish when you're actively feeling pai...