Pain Joint

Arthritis is a condition that is characterized by pain. How does Arthritis cause pain, and why?

To understand the answer to the question of how does Arthritis cause pain, it is necessary to review the purpose of pain. Pain is a function of the human nervous system and it serves a definite purpose. When something is wrong and harm is being done to the body in most anyway, chemicals are produced at the site of the disturbance. These chemicals cause a signal to be sent through the nervous system to the brain. The brain translates this signal into the sensation of pain.

It is helpful to visualize pain as a sort of fire alarm. It is ringing because there is a fire. It is not the alarm that is the problem. Therefore, merely turning off the alarm does not offer the best solution. This is the common wisdom behind pain. This is especially true of what is called acute pain. Acute pain is directly related to a short term problem. It flares up to alert us to the problem, and generally goes away shortly. If you place your hand on a hot stove, you will feel intense acute pain at the point of contact. Thus warned of our mistake, we quickly move our hand and the pain ceases.

Now, in the example above, we may have burned our hand before we were able to remove it. The pain remains to alert us to the injured tissue. After a short period of healing, the pain again is gone. Chronic pain is really the same thing. It also is alerting us that something is wrong. The problem with chronic pain is that it does not go away. This is because the condition that brings it about does not really heal.

Arthritis is an inflammation of the joints of the body. It is a term that comes from two Greek roots that mean joint and inflammation. There are over a hundred different types of Arthritis and many different causes. The inflammation may be the result of trauma to the joint or it may simply be a result of age. Regardless of the cause, inflammation is not the natural condition of the tissue surrounding the joint and the pain signal is produced.

Most of the treatments for Arthritis deal with pain management only because there is so often nothing that can be done about the inflammation. This is especially true when the cause is the natural degeneration of the joints due to advanced age. The body will contain to produce chemical pain signals because we have no way to tell it we understand there is a problem and we do not need any further warnings.