I posted this on the RA Friends site and realised that the people who responded suffered from Rheumatoid arthritis (based on their replies I'm glad I don't have rheumatoid arthritis!) whereas I have extensive osteoarthritis and I’d be interested to hear from people with osteoarthritis to see if they believe some of their bad patches occur for similar reasons to mine. I am currently going through quite a bad patch where I am waking with a lot more stiffness and pain than usual. When this happens I ask myself is there anything I did that might have caused my arthritis to flare up and sometimes I can pinpoint a possible reason and other times it remains a mystery.
For me the most likely reason I have a bad day is when I do too much physical and perhaps even mental activity (e.g. working on my car which involves twisting and contorting my body) and I suffer for it the next day. My current bad patch is probably due to my having spent hours doing a repair on my car which involved stretching and twisting my body into all sorts of positions. This seems to cause the nerves that send pain signals to the brain to go into overtime for a few days.
For me an extremely busy day doing too many different things without a rest is the most common reason I have been able to identify for waking up feeling more pain and stiffness than usual the next day but perhaps others have identified other possible precipitators of bad days.
Sometimes I suspect some foods may also contribute but I can’t be sure. I've also wandered if the 3 or 4 (or more) cans of Coca Cola I've drunk every day for many years had any link to my arthritis!
I’ve noticed I have cycles where I have a run of good days when I wake feeling relatively good and don’t know why and then a series of bad days occur (like I’m having now) and apart from too much physical activity I usually can’t pinpoint a reason for these cycles.
I have noticed that the longer I sleep the worse I am likely to feel when I wake. My body doesn’t react well to more than 7 or 8 hours of sleep. The longer I sleep the more pain and stiffness I'm likely to feel on waking.
Another definite precipitator is stress. When stressed my muscles tense and this increases pain and if I have one stressful day after another (as I used to have prior to retiring from my job) then I require much more medication.
I believe that I was heading for a heart attack or stroke if I had not retired allowing me to reduce my medication from 400mg of Tramadol, 200mg of Celebrex and the occasional Valium down to 200mg of Tramadol most days. It shows how much more pain I was in from working long hours in a stressful job while also taking care of my sick parents on my own. Stress seems to increase pain in both osteo and
rheumatoid arthritis.
I’d be interested to hear different people’s thoughts on reasons they have flare ups of symptoms-those days when you wake and feel awful more so than usual and wether they have identified similar reasons to mine for bad days or have also identified other ones as well.
Hi Dragon :)
G'day again,
I too have bad days with my OA and have been monitoring it now specifically the past 4 weeks. I like you find if I over sleep, I will awake with more stiffness and pain, but most importantly I am noticing diet (what I eat) plays a major roll. I am finding if I stay with the organic and healthier foods, stay away from the white breads, take aways, sugar loaded carbohydrates, my days are significantly better. So healthy it is for me from now on. whatever will make my life better and pain free.
Hi Cazz,
I haven't really noticed any connection between foods I eat and pain levels or how I feel each day (with the possible exception of pasta which I've noticed if I eat at night I seem to feel good the next morning) but I'm sure the rich Western diet eventually leads to many diseases (arthritis included) that before countries became rich were much less prevalent.
The site about the McDougall Wellness centre I posted about elsewhere puts forward a very compelling argument for changing one's diet and I believe that the older we get the more we stand to benefit from a healthy diet like the one McDougall proposes. The hard part is making the change and sticking to it. I think that the saying you can’t teach an old dog new tricks is not always true but the problem is many old dogs are too tired to try.
http://www.drmcdougall.com/index.html
Edward
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