Rheumatoid Arthritis Useful Facts

Rheumatoid arthritis is such a extensive sickness that approximately 1% of people of the world suffers from this disorder; in spite of this, the unbelievable thing is there are innumerable wrong assumptions associated with this usually depicted joint condition.

Really speaking, RA is a confusing disorder. Round-the-clock research is going on and modern medicaments are being learnt continuously for it and hence understanding of the illness is vague in minds of people. And this lack of understanding is not just with laypeople; masters too do not possess a full knowledge of this disorder.

Many times this ailment is misunderstood as arthritis. But the arthritis in people’s assumption is osteoarthritis, which is caused by trauma or degeneration of aging joints. It often is depicted in an age group above middle age. In contrast to this, RA is a deep-rooted, ongoing autoimmune disorder and its reason is not yet known. Rheumatologists infer that the mistake is often because patients having RA may also suffer from osteoarthritis.

Another wrong assumption regarding RA is it makes its presence only in old age. Truly speaking, the sickness appears anywhere between 20 and 70 and the age group of 30 to 55 is of highest occurrence. Teenagers also may catch RA. People of older age group may get severe pattern of the disease, because they are suffering from it for longer period.

People also have wrong assumptions about the severity of the disease and don’t take it seriously. Really speaking this disorder can even cost life, if not treated correctly and on time. There are many episodes in which people didn’y pay the necessary attention to the disease and lost all the opportunities of recovering. People only hesitate seeing the doctor and their joints get damaging in growing amount for months and for years. Added to that, rheumatoid arthritis patients have higher chances of getting heart conditions and other drastic conditions such as infections and lung sickness.

On the contrary, some people have a misconception that RA makes the patient end up in a wheelchair or nursing home. In fact, the disease shows various manifestations amongst different individuals and most of the patients can lead life without depending on others. It was true about the past days that the circumstance was such, but in the forthcoming days, there is significant advancement in the medicaments and currently a high percentage of individuals having this disorder, though not completely recovered, can lead life without the assistance of somebody else with no limitations on their movements any longer. Even, persons with RA can go to work with no difficulty. Though some of them have some restrictions and need certain remodeling to be done while they undergo flares, a high percentage of them lead a good life too.

The most dangerous misconception is therapies for this illness are toxic and it is better to postpone them till the disease worsens, before initiating the treatment. There are hoards of evidences available to ascertain that punctual treatment of the sickness not only decelerates the advancement of the illness, but also stops it. Albeit it is true that some of the medications for RA have severe side effects, side effects of untreated RA are more dangerous than them. And the side effects of the treatments can be detected without any difficulty by lots of laboratory tests.

Some people believe that there is increased chance of cancer with RA which is right to some degree associated with lymphoma (blood cancer), but it possesses a positive side too that risk of colorectal cancer is lowered with RA, although reason for both is a mystery.

Although rheumatoid arthritis is thus a puzzling ailment in many ways, you can deal with it by having knowledge about it correctly.