About 3 years ago it was my right knee, last year my left shoulder started, then about
2 months ago suddenly nearly everything else started to ache. After several x-rays and
doctor visits I’ve been told that is just arthritis and that no your drinking probably did not contribute to this (3 - 5 drinks a day for the past 2 years - the past couple years has been very stressful for me). Things ache even when I’m sitting or lying down.
No one in my family that I know of has this problem when they reached my age (63).
I can’t imaging spending the rest of my life like this. So anyway when did it the pain
start for you? And how do you live with it?
Thank you for your answers, I look forward to reading them.
Early 40s. It is so hard to deal with some days. I take Celebrex. It does help. It’s not a magic bullet but it calms inflammation down.
Recently my finger joints have been weird. I intend on seeing if I have RA as soon as the lastest crap I have gets figured out.
Good luck and add Epsom salts to a hot bath and soak as long as you can.
I broke the bones at the bottom of each thumb, have had surgery on both and have had arthritis since then. Probably started at 40 YO. I occasionally experience it in my hips and lower back. I have osteopenia. My endocrinologist theorizes it’s because I started drinking in my teens and that prevented them from maturing in strength. I also have an immune disease which likely contributed.
When my hands hurt all the time, a crisis stage, I take 800 mg ibuprofen for a few weeks. You can also use Volteran gel, or a drug store generic, to apply locally. It delivers an NSAID directly to the affected area instead of through the body.
The best thing I do is manage my diet. I take vitamin E which reduces inflammation. When I remove foods from my diet that cause inflammation, I feel better. Includes gluten, sugar, soy, dairy, and caffeine. I don’t drink anymore but that will help to cut back or eliminate since there’s so much sugar in alcohol. I also do one protein shake a day with pea protein, unsweetened vanilla almond milk and berries.
It’s not easy with diet. I love coffee and sugar and pasta, but find what works. Good luck.
I’ve got mild arthritis in the small joints - fingers and toes that bug me when the weather changes, from my early 40s. I don’t usually need to take anything but it is in my future.
I have wonderful familial arthritis on my mom’s side. My grandmother, mother, and uncle all ended up with quite twisted fingers, and I don’t think my mother has a good joint left. 2 new knees, a fused spine above C6, and an ankle that should be fused but she would rather deal with the pain than the surgery.
At age 34. Was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis a year later, inflammation in 90% of my joints. The diagnosis took a while because of my age, so quite a lot of damage had already been done and the disease progressed very quickly.
Since then it’s started affecting my eyes too (who knew that could happen?) and I’ve developed fibromyalgia and Sjogren’s Syndrome (and some osteoarthritis) due to the RA.
I’m on a biological drug called adulimumab that’s injected once a fortnight, occasional steroid injections, occasional (a few months long) top-ups of methotrexate. Unfortunately I don’t respond to codeine-type drugs, and NSAIDs made my asthma dangerously bad (and gave me an ulcer), so for pain relief I only have paracetamol.
In my 30s, about 35ish. It’s in my right hand. It wasn’t too bad at first, but I did have to drop out of my bowling league. 20 years on and I’ve got one finger starting to gnarl up a bit. I’ve got it in my neck too, but that hasn’t given me any problems that I’m aware of, maybe a tendency to stoop a bit?
It’s starting right about now, I think, or started a few months back. I’m 65. My right index finger main knuckle is painful all the time, and the skin on the knuckle is super-sensitive. Is sensitivity of the skin over the joint common with arthritis? My mom had bad arthritis of the hands and towards the end of her life they were quite crippled. She sadly couldn’t do her favorite quilting or sewing anymore in her old age.
My left hip has grown painful in just the last few weeks. It’s quite excruciating to rotate my leg outwards with the knee bent. Since this is the motion that you make when you tie your shoelaces or otherwise tend to your foot, it’s going to be an issue. I’m hoping it’s maybe just a strained tendon and not arthritis. Time will tell.
For me, it started in high school. (Arthritis runs in the family.) I have it in my hips.
It’s a mixture of cycles, with a helping of “no rhyme or reason” thrown in. It TENDS to be worse in cold weather, but not always. It’s not at all uncommon for me to go several days at a time with no pain at all. When it does hurt, I use an assorted mixture of analgesic creams/ointments, and/or a heating pad. That’s usually enough; when it’s not, I add Ibuprofen.
When I was 12, after a knee injury. When I had a pediatrician I was told it was “growing pains” despite the pain beginning within a few weeks of me slamming my knee on the concrete ledge surrounding the garage during a game of tag so hard I couldn’t put any weight on it for a while, but at 21 I was finally diagnosed with arthritis.
I was in my thirties when I complained to my doctor that my thumbs hurt. He said the thumbs are the first place arthritis shows up. Oh, fun.
When I was a kid in middle school, my knees began dislocating regularly. Since then, my knees have bothered me. They have even threatened to collapse. More fun. Physical therapy helped a lot.
Then, in my fifties, my knees began to HURT. Constantly. After seeing commercials on TV advertising Cymbalta for arthritis pain, I talked to my doctor about switching my current antidepressant for Cymbalta. No problem.
It worked. Miraculously. I still have occasional knee pain, but it is NOTHING compared to what I had before.
Arthritic shoulders started maybe 10 years ago at age 45. Breaking both collarbones probably didn’t help, and neither did being a carpenter for 30 years. Getting the left replaced next month.