“If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.”
– George Bernard Shaw
ARTHRITIS
The longer you are alive, the greater your chances are of developing arthritis. I’d rather take that chance then consider my alternatives. As we age everyone experiences changes in their body. Some sooner due to abuse the body has withstood over its lifetime like: sports injuries; falls; poor posture; bad spinal alignment; car accidents; whiplash; lack of flexibility; and genetics.
Arthritis is a condition that can seriously limit the movement of people of any age as they become older. The healthy joints that we are born with become worn; a condition known as degeneration. This can lead to abnormal motion in the affected joint and in the spine create uneven stress to the disc space between the spinal bones and eventually instability of the area altogether.
Arthritis is a slow process and will decrease the range of motion in our body. With less space between our joints and an inability to move our bones like we once did, our muscles corresponding to these regions will also shorten and become tight. Many elderly people will notice less motion and flexibility in their entire spine as they age.
This is an adaptation to the change in our ranges of motion due to arthritis. The more we repeat an activity, the more that area will be under stress and break down over time. That’s why repetitive motion causes many problems in our body.
The most common type of arthritis is Osteoarthritis, which commonly forms after degenerative changes occur over time, after an injury or an infection. It affects either side of the body and usually is noticed more as we age.
Rheumatoid Arthritis and Psoriatic Arthritis are other types of arthritis. In these cases the body actually attacks itself, destroying the joint space, leading to deformation of the joints it involves. Grandparents with fingers that become splayed away from the thumb or have large swollen joints probably have a condition similar to this.
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