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What is a Joint?

Every time two or more of the 206 bones in your body come together, they form a joint. These joints have a variety of strength, range of motion and complexity ranging from the immovable joints in your skull to your knees, the most complex joints in your body where not two, but three bones come together. A series of ligaments, connective tissues that join one bone to another, and tendons, connective tissues that join a bone to a muscle, strengthen these joints and allow them to move. Often, fluid-filled sacs cushion the bones and keep them from rubbing against one another.

There are 360 joints in the human body, each one is responsible for allowing us to run, walk, stand, sit, stretch, lift, jump, bend, and do every other activity we take for granted in our daily lives.

What Causes Joint Pain?

Joint pain can be caused by a number of illnesses, injuries, and conditions. Some of the most common causes of joint pain are arthritis, bursitis, fibromyalgia, gout, sprain, strain, and tendonitis.

Arthritis
Arthritis is not one disease, but a descriptive term for more than 100 diseases that affect the joints in the body. Common symptoms include stiffness, pain and a limited range of motion in the affected joint. Osteoarthritis, the most common type of arthritis often results in chronic pain and a lack of ability to do normal daily tasks like open jars, walk up stairs, or write with a pen or pencil.

This happens when the cartilage, the cushioning surface on the ends of the bones, breaks down causing a bone to rub directly against another bone. More than 50 million adults and 300,000 children have arthritis in some form but don’t necessarily know it. While there is no known cure, protecting the cartilage in the body and keeping joints moving the way they should can prevent further deterioration.

Bursitis
Small fluid-filled sacs called bursae work to cushion the bones in your joints as well as the surrounding muscles and tendons. When these sacs become inflamed, the condition is called bursitis. Most often, bursitis affects shoulders, hips, elbows, and knees, but you can experience it in your heels and the base of your big toe. Any joint that performs repetitive motion is at risk for developing bursitis. Typically, bursitis causes pain, stiffness, swelling, and redness in the joint and surrounding area and often flares up after it goes away.

Fibromyalgia
Fibromyalgia is not a disease, but rather a descriptive term for widespread, chronic pain in the muscles and joints on both sides of the body, above and below your waist. Infection, emotional trauma, and genetics may play a role in developing fibromyalgia, but the cause is unknown. Treatment often focuses on relieving the painful symptoms, sleep problems, or mental fog that often accompanies the condition.

Gout
Gout is a type of inflammatory arthritis that flares up when you have high levels of uric acid in your bloodstream. Our bodies naturally produce uric acid when we metabolize red meat, alcohol or sugar, but our kidneys filter it out through our urine. When your body produces too much uric acid that cannot be readily removed from the bloodstream, it forms sharp crystals in your joints that causes severe pain, redness, swelling, and tenderness.

Sprain
A joint sprain happens when the ligaments (the tissues that connect one bone to another) are partially or completely torn. While ankle sprains are the most common type of sprain in the body, any movable joint can be sprained when it suddenly moves in a direction it is not intended to. Sprained joints are painful, they often swell, and left untreated leave the joint vulnerable to further injury.

Strain
While many people use the terms “sprain” and “strain” interchangeably, the two conditions are actually different. While a sprain is the stretching and tearing of ligaments, a strain happens when tendons and muscles stretch or tear. Even though strains most often happen in the legs, feet, and back, they can happen anywhere a tendon connects a bone and a muscle. Like a sprain, a strain is painful and can result in swelling and tenderness. And like a sprain, if left untreated, a strain can leave the joint weak and vulnerable to injury later on.

Tendinitis
Tendinitis is one of the most common overuse injuries in the body. Repetitive, minor impact leads to inflammation in the tendon, the thick, fibrous tissue that connects your bone to your muscle. Tendinitis can happen at any time in any joint but is most common in arms, shoulders, knees, and hips. It is often painful with swelling and redness in the affected joint. Traditional treatment involves rest, ice and over-the-counter pain relievers, but these often do not address the underlying cause of most tendinitis – an incorrectly placed joint, poor posture, or weak muscles.

Joint Pain Treatment

The best treatment for your joint pain will depend on where it is located and the severity of the injury. These cutting-edge, drug-free joint pain treatments are among the safest, most effective, and commonly used.

Regenerative Therapy
Stem cells are the basic building blocks of all tissue, organs, bones, and nerves in our bodies. These cells have the potential to become anything – new tissue, new bone, new organs, or new tendons and ligaments. All they need is the right signal for them to start growing. When these cells are injected into a damaged joint, they begin to form new tissue and help heal the damage safely and permanently.

Regenerative therapies have been proven to regenerate cartilage, heal ligament and tendon tears and keep thousands of patients out of a surgeon’s office. This type of minimally invasive treatment has also been shown to help you return to activity up to 50 percent faster than surgery or other interventions.

Chiropractic
Most people associate chiropractic care with the spine, not knees, feet, ankles, or hips. When you stop to think about it, chiropractic care is exclusively about realigning joints in the body to help them function properly. If the joints in the vertebrae are aligned, the nerves that emanate from the spine are able to communicate with the rest of the body undisturbed. As a result, people experience less pain not only in their backs but also throughout their body.

Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMF)
Pulsed Electromagnetic Field Therapy (PEMF) sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel, but it is one of the most effective non-invasive treatment options for joint pain available. Every cell in your body, from your heart to your brain to your muscles runs on an electrical charge. As these electrical impulses diminish over time, it becomes more difficult for the cells to regenerate. As most of us know, cell death leads to illness, poor circulation, slow healing, and pain. PEMF supercharges the electrical impulses in your body’s cells by sending thousands of volts into your body in billionth of a second pulses. PEMF is painless, non-invasive and can be completed by simply laying down on a PEMF equipped table. In addition to faster healing, tissue regrowth, and bone strengthening, most people report sleeping better and feeling less stress after their session.

Platelet Rich Plasma (PRP) Therapy
Our bodies naturally produce a blood product called plasma that consists of concentrated platelets, red blood cells, and white blood cells. By concentrating this plasma and introducing it to your joints, PRP therapy isolates your body’s ability to heal itself and delivers it right where you need it. This minimally invasive process repairs joints without drugs or surgery.

Whether you just injured yourself or you are babying an old joint injury, knowing when to treat it at home and when to call a professional is one of the biggest keys to achieving total healing and health. If you have been struggling for more than two weeks, or your pain is getting worse, not improving with rest or keeping you from doing the things you do, call Sandstone for a consultation.