Joint pain - Elite Hormone Health

What is Joint Pain?

Joint pain refers to discomfort, aches, and soreness in any of the body's joints. This common problem can range from mild to severe, coming on suddenly or slowly over time.

Some key points about joint pain:

• It often results from injury or inflammation affecting a joint's tissues like ligaments, bones, muscles, tendons, and cartilage. Common culprits are injuries, arthritis, autoimmune diseases or infection of the joint.
• Symptoms depend on the cause but usually involve swelling, stiffness, tenderness, warmth, redness, or difficulty/pain moving the joint.
• Pain may be acute (short-lived) from an injury or chronic (long-lasting) from arthritis or other illness. Chronic pain may come and go or be constant.
• Common sites of pain are the knees, hips, back, hands, shoulders, neck and feet, but it can occur in any joint.

Some major causes of joint pain include:

• Osteoarthritis - wearing down of cartilage and bone rub together
• Rheumatoid arthritis - inflammation of joint lining from an overactive immune system
• Injuries like sprains, fractures or dislocations
• Bursitis - swelling of fluid-filled sacs between bone and tissues
• Tendinitis - swelling/damage of tendons
• Gout - uric acid crystal buildup causing inflammation

Seeing a doctor is key to determine the cause and proper treatment. Options may include medications like NSAIDs, steroids or DMARDs, joint injections, braces, physical/occupational therapy, surgery or lifestyle changes.

Managing joint pain typically requires a whole-body approach. Maintaining a healthy weight to avoid pressure on joints, regular stretching/strenthening exercises, eating an anti-inflammatory diet, quitting smoking, trying supplements, and pacing/modifying activities can help reduce pain too.

For those struggling with persistent joint discomfort or arthritis symptoms, consider reaching out to the caring medical team at Elite Hormone Health Optimization Clinic. Their integrative approach looks at hormonal influences on inflammation and immune function. Many patients find customized bioidentical hormone therapy helps relieve stubborn inflammation to reduce swelling, stiffness and pain in affected joints. Their goal is to help you move freely and live actively again. Call today to ask about their risk-free consultaion to see if their treatments might be right for getting your joints and life back on track!