Sore Joints
Sore joints or joint pains may be caused due to a variety of factors. Joints in our body refer to the places where two or more bones meet each other. At times, due to various reasons, these bones get swollen & starts to pain causing sore joints. A sore joint can be both discomforting & extremely painful. It restricts your participation in activities since it causes both pain & stiffness in the joints which are affected. Therefore, the joint that is paining, will render that particular area of the body almost ineffective. Sore joints may happen from illness & infection to overuse of bone joints (arthritis).
Reasons For Sore Joints:
1. Illness: Diseases like flu can cause sore joints. Even common clod may cause the joints to pain. This is why, the bone joints in the body pains when you suffer from problems like runny nose, headache, cough or congestion.
2. Injury: Painful joints may be caused by injury to the bone joints. Injury may also affect the muscles, tendons, ligaments apart from the joint.
3. Bursitis: Bursas are fluid filled sacs that offer cushioning effects to the bones in a joint. At times, due to various reasons these bursas get inflamed & start to pain. The most common areas for bursitis are elbow, hip, shoulder, ankle & knee.
4. Overuse: Overuse of particular joints cause a great amount of wear & tear in them. The most common problem which happens due to overuse is osteoarthritis. In osteoarthritis, the cartilages between two bones get damaged because of overuse & it causes pain, swelling & stiffness to the affected bone joint. Overuse can also lead to sprain in the ligaments around the joints.
5. Disease: Certain diseases such as Lyme disease cause painful joints. Lyme disease happens due to bacterial infection. It causes extreme pain & swelling of the bones joints along with stiffness. Lyme disease can get serious if it ignored & untreated for a long time.
Symptoms:
Some of the common symptoms of sore joints are:
● Pain in & around the bone joints.
● Swelling.
● Stiffness.
● Tenderness.
● Redness.
Treatments of sore joints:
● Heating & cooling therapy. Application of heat & ice alternatively helps in reducing the pain of sore joints.
● Light stretching exercises are useful in treating sore joints. These exercises help the muscles & tendons around the joints to relax & make them retain their strength.
● Over the counter pain relieving creams help in educing the pain caused by sore joints.
● Medicines like ibuprofen, naproxen etc, are good for reduction of sore joint pain.
● Overweight may cause sore joints. In that case, one would need to lose weight for a long term solution to the sore joint problem.
● A hot bath in Epsom salt can be helpful in reducing pain & swelling.
● Extreme cases osteoarthritis & rheumatoid arthritis would require surgery to completely fix the problem.
● Eating a balanced & nutritious diet is important to get rid of the problem of sore joints.