Arthritis Symptoms: Arthritis Rheumatoid in Women
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The first rheumatoid arthritis symptoms might be swelling and morning stiffness or only a general aching of the joints. In 90 per cent of ladies, the 1st areas affected by rheumatoid arthritis are the feet and hands. The disease often impacts the wrist and the finger joints nearest to the palm, also as joints in the jaw, neck, shoulders, elbows, hips, knees, ankles and toes. Any joint within the body could possibly be a target.
Inflammation can lead to body wide symptoms for example low grade fever, flu like body aches, and a general feeling of not being well. You can also lose your appetite, lose weight, and feel as if yo have no energy. Fatigue is an extremely common symptom of RA and can initial overtake you in the afternoon. Fatigue might be also a symptom of anemia, which often accompanies RA. Inflammation can affect the tear producing glands in the eyes and saliva producing glands in the mouth, so you can experience dry eyes and dry mouth. You can have muscle pain and stiffness after sitting or lying in one position for a long period. Depression also is common.
At initial, all of these symptoms could not add up to much. Often a women will complain of joint pain to her doctor, and all which can be viewed in a puffiness of the hands, without obvious redness or warmth. About one-quarter of females with RA develop brought up, firm lumps called rheumatoid nodules. Rheumatoid nodules are definitely abnormal accumulations of cells, just like the synovial cells that we see accumulating in the joint, but they generally take place just under the skin. Nodules often appear in an area where there's repeated pressure, like on the elbows where you lean them on a table, or the finger joints. Since rheumatoid arthritis in hands is a systemic disease, nodules can show up in other places, just like the eye, the heart, the lungs. They may be very destructive, very damaging, interrupting what ever is in their path of growth. And they can be disfiguring and disconcerting to patients.
Up to half of RA patients can develop inflammation in the linings of the chest and lungs, causing pain on taking a deep breath and breathlessness; rheumatoid nodules can also appear in the lung tissues itself, not only the lining. Inflammation can affect the sac around the heart, producing fever, chest pain, a dry cough and difficulty breathing. Blood vessels can also be inflamed; a common sign is tiny broken blood vessels in the cuticle area of the nail bed.
You might first notice the symptoms of RA through the winter, and symptoms often feel worse throughout the cold months and greatly improve in warm weather. As RA develops gradually in about fifty per-cent of ladies, with symptoms coming and going for months, a more continuous pattern gradually emerges. This disease desires to be diagnosed in a short time and treatment demands to be initiated rapidly. So that raises the importance of having women recognize the signs and symptoms.
