Your Joint Pain Might Not Be Arthritis—Here’s Why That Matters

Introduction to Joint Pain vs. Arthritis 0:00

Do you know that 1.6 billion people, be as a billion, people in the world are suffering from joint pain? And do you also know, that joint is not the same as arthritis? So in that video today, I'll help you learn more about what is joint pain and what arthritis is. At the end of the video, you will have a clarity on understanding what truly is arthritis and how you tackle your symptoms of joint pains. Let's stick around. And at the in, I will also give you some practical tips that will help talk confidently with your rheumatologist and your primary care doctor if you have any joint-pain symptoms.

Hello all of you Rheumatoid Arthritis Warrior. This is Dr. Anant Subedi, your rheumator arthritis coach at The Room Doc, as well as a practicing rheumeatologist here in Cary, North Carolina. Now, As I discussed earlier, many of might be having joint pain symptoms, and many may be confused about what to do with the joint pains. So let me help you learn more about joint pain and arthritis in our video today. And before I move further, don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel so that you can learn.

More about arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis is in. Our channel and will also share with you a lot of other important health tips in managing your arthritis. Don't. Forget to grab the free copy of our book, the Holistic Rheumatic Arthritis Guidebook. which is there to help you learn about rheumatoid arthritis. And also I have prepared a special recipe that you can make every morning so that we can fight against rheuma to arthritis that is our anti-inflammatory smoothie that You can find in the description below.

Now I'm also looking for some feedback from all of you rheuamatoids who are here. I've been trying to create different type of content that will resonate with you that'll help You understand more about Rheumataid Arthritis. So please give me some Feedback on what type content do you really like and any improvement that we need to do to make our content simple and useful for you.

Channel Intro and What Joint Pain Means 1:49

And to change the style of my presentation, I am now doing a different thing today. So please give me feedback how you like this type of content. I'll be using a presentation so that As I talked earlier, you might have had this joint pain symptoms, but the joint and arthritis are two different conditions. Joint pain basically means you have some pain ongoing around your joint. This is not a diagnosis. Arthritis on the other hand means a diagnosis. You might have some problem in your joint that is causing the joint pain.

So don't get confused with joint with arthritis. Think of joint as a signal. It's a sign that there is something abnormal happening in the joints. When you have joint then you need to see your doctor. Then they will try to understand what might be the cause of the pain that will lead us to the diagnosis and one of conditions that can cause joint is arthritis Now, to understand better about the joint pain, let's also understand the normal structure of our joint. Now most of us have joint in different parts of the body and the main function of joint is for mobility.

This will allow movement in your body. So, joint, is an important part of body which helps keep us mobile. Now joint typically have different structures. Now I have highlighted here the various structure that we have in our joint that includes the bone. So the two bone that come together to form a joint. And in between those two bones you have cartilage. You can think of cartilages like a cushion. This cushion helps in smooth movement of your joint and to make the movement smooth You also have some fluid in between your bone and that we call synovial fluid.

So you can think of synova fluid as a joint fluid or joint oil that will help lubricate your joint. And in a healthy, normal joint, the movement of the joint is very smooth and quiet. But when there is problem, then you will see unusual movement, unusual sound when you move your joints. Now, other important strokes that we also need to understand in a joint is called synovial membrane. Now the synovial membrane is basically a thin line. Let me highlight it here. So this is your thin lining that usually lines the inner part of your joint.

And you have synovium there to produce this synovial fluid. So the synova lining typically produce synaveal fluid now when we talk about diseases affecting the joint. These are the various structures that could be affected and interesting enough. Not every pain that you feel in your joint is coming from the joint itself. There are a lot of other supporting structures in the joints that can also cause joint pain. Let's look at this picture one more time.

Normal Joint Structure and Supporting Tissues 4:49

You have ligaments in you joint. You also have cartilages as we discussed earlier and you have muscles. And there are also some tendons that attach to your bone. So you tendon, ligament and cartilage. Those are the other structure within your joint. Joint pain could be coming from these different structures. Not every joint pain that you are experiencing is coming form the joint itself. You can also get joint pains from what we call a periarticular structure such as ligaments, tendin and muscles Now, let me also give you an example of your shoulder joint.

There are many conditions that can cause joint pain around your shoulders, but one of the other common conditions can also feel like shoulder pain is a problem in the bursa and tendon around the shoulder, and the common one being rotator cuff tendonitis. which is itself not a joint problem, but it's a problem around the structure of your joint, particularly the tendons around that solar joint. That is one of the common cause of solar pain. So to summarize, joint structures consist of two bones that come together and there's thin layer of tissue called cartilage, which it like a cushion, and the joint is lined by a thin tissue layer called synovigous.

Now you might be wondering why I need to know all of these things. When we talk about diseases, we'll be talking about these different structures. Certain diseases affect the synovium, certain diseases effect the cartilages, and depending on those diseases the treatment also changes. So it's important for you to understand what are those different structure in your joint. Now, as I discussed earlier, so joint pain is an alarm. It's an Alarm that something abnormal is happening in your joint or your surrounding structures.

And pain also tells us something is wrong so that we can address those problems so it does not lead to disease. So don't take your pain lightly. If you are having pain in your joint or around the joint structure. If it is lasting for too long period of time without any trauma, let your doctor know so that we can understand what might be causing the symptom of joint pain. Now, when you try to understand the causes of pain, we typically categorize joint into two different categories. The first one being mechanical type of problems, which we call wear and tear, are also referred to as non-inflammatory arthritis conditions.

And the second one, being the inflammatory conditions and in inflammatory condition, as you can see, these are the problem related with your immune system. Your immune systems become hyperactive. It caused problems in those joint structures. So you could have joint pain from two sources. One is mechanical. wear and tear are also called non-inflammatory conditions as well as inflammatory conditions. Let's start with the mechanical joint pain or non inflammatory type of joint pains. And in noninflammatories conditions it's typically due to overuse, injuries or age related changes in your joint structures and typically the cartilages.

Now in non-inflammatory arthritis conditions, the joint cartilage slowly wears down and it's part of the aging process and also depend on the type of joints and prior injuries that might expedite this wear down process in your cartilages. An important thing to remember is the non-inflammatory condition is not due to any type of immune dysfunction or immune related problems.

Mechanical vs. Inflammatory Joint Pain 8:13

These are basically more overuse and wear and tear related conditions. Now, here are the common symptoms of non inflammatory or mechanical type-of-joint pain. The conditions that cause mechanical types of joint pain are typically worse with activity. the pain typically worsen when you are more active. And when you rest, typically the joint pain feels better. And one of the other important clue of non-inflammatory arthritis condition is the morning stiffness. In non inflammatory condition, the mornings stiffness typically lasts for less than 30 minutes.

And you will also see some swelling, but the swelling is typically more bony swelling rather than soft swelling that is seen in inflammatory conditions. And when you touch your joints, when your feel your joint, they typically don't feel warm because this is not due to inflammation. This is more due word and tear and you feel more boney changes without any warmth. So pay attention to these symptoms that will help you understand whether you have inflammatory arthritis condition versus non-inflammatory arthritis conditions.

Now all of you rheumatoid arthritis warrior I hope you are learning more about different arthritis condition. If you like this video so far please hit that like button and also don't forget to subscribe to our channel The Room Dog so that we can create more content like these to help you learn about the different arthritis conditions such as rheuma arthritis and don' forget accept our gift the Holistic Rheumatoid Arthritis Guidebook, which is written just for you to help you learn about rheumatitis as well as the recipe of the smoothie that I created to fight against inflammatory arthritis conditions.

And we also have a big mission for our channel for this year. So by the end of 2026, we are trying to touch at least 100,000 rheuma arthritis warriors who are suffering from this arthritis condition and they are not clear about what is happening. We want to bring clarity in their lives. So please support in our mission. Now let's go to the next important topic that is the inflammatory joint pain or inflammatory arthritis conditions. The inflammatory conditions are due to immune system causing problems in your joints.

So your joint tissues are attacked by your own immune cells. And these cause inflammation in the joint lining. And if you could recall, what we talked in first few slides was the synovium. So the Synovum is a thin lining around your joint. The joint linings become thicker. causing inflammation and joint damage and this thickened synovium causes damage into your cartilage and the bone causing deformities. So if you have seen people who have inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis you might have noticed they have a lot of deformity if they were not treated on time so those deformitites suggest there is some joint damaged happening in those areas.

An important point when you irreversible. Hence it is very important to understand the inflammatory arthritis early and treat them early so that it does not cause joint damage. Now here are the important symptoms that will help you understand early whether you have inflammatory arthritic condition or not. And the first one being the morning stiffness. And in inflammatory arthritis, the mornings stiffness typically lasts for more than 30 minutes to an hour. That's one of the early clue of inflammatory Arthritis.

You will also appreciate swelling and warmth around your joint. Since these are conditioned due to systemic problems, systemic immune problems. That's why you will also get some systemic symptoms, which includes fatigue and low level of energy. So those are some of the common symptoms of inflammatory arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis or lupus related arthritis. Now here is a table that will help you understand more about what is the difference between inflammatory arthritis and non-inflammatory arthritis.

And as we discussed, the primary cause of the non inflammatory is due to weight and tear of cartilage.

Why Early Diagnosis and Treatment Matter 12:28

typically happen due to injuries, aging, or overuse. And on the other side, the inflammatory joint pain is due immune system dysfunction, that is hyperactive immune systems. One of the important symptoms we discussed was the pain getting worse with activity in non-inflammatory arthritis, whereas in inflammatory arthritis you typically feel better when you are active. You typically feel more pain when you are not using your joint, such as in the morning you get more symptoms, night time you can get symptoms.

That's one of the important clues that will help us differentiate between inflammatory arthritis and non-inflammatory arthritis. And the morning stiffness typically lasts for less than 30 minutes in non-inflammatory arthritis and more than thirty minutes to an hour in inflammatory arthritis condition. And when you fever your joint, you typically feel more of a bony swelling. There is no warmth in the joint in case of non inflammatory or arthritis. In the inflammatory, arthritis you have this soft tissue swelling, you have signs of inflammation such as worms around your joint.

And as we discussed earlier, non-inflammatory arthritis are more of a local joint and tendon and muscle related problem. So they cause localized symptoms. They don't cause any systemic symptoms compared to inflammatory arthritis, which are immune dysfunction, with our systemic problem, so you will get systemic symptom such that low-grade fever and fatigue and even anemia. Those are some of the symptoms of systemic involvement in inflammatory arthritis conditions. Now here is a quick summary of what we have stocked so far.

So in mechanical and non-inflammatory condition you will feel worse with use of your joint and it's a local problem. In inflammatory orthotic condition, you feel better when you're active and it's a whole body problem. Your whole immune system becomes activated, causing systemic symptoms. Now, the other question you might ask is why this is important to understand inflammatory versus non-inflammatory condition? Why this so important? And the most important thing, why is this important is that if you have a wrong diagnosis, You get the wrong treatment and wrong treatments will lead to delayed healing of those joints.

Hence, it's very important to understand the right diagnosis, inflammatory versus non-inflammatory arthritis conditions. Now if it is a non inflammatory condition, if there's a mechanical pain, then movement and strength typically help you improve your joint pain symptoms. particularly in the non-inflammatory condition which are due to mechanical pain or mechanical problem, exercise, physical therapy typically help you improve your function. But in case of inflammatory arthritis condition, we need to decrease your immune system.

We need manage your system with medication as well as lifestyle changes. So in inflammatory Arthritis condition early treatment to calm down your immunity system is so important so that it does not cause long term joint damage. Now all of you rheumatoid arthritis warrior, hopefully you have got some clarity today regarding inflammatory arthritis condition and non-inflammatory arthritis conditions. Now if you've had joint pain, if have seen your doctors, you might have been told it is inflammatory arthritis versus non inflammatory arthritis.

please put your comment below to tell us what your diagnosis was. Was it an inflammatory arthritis like rheumatoid arthritis or non-inflammatory arthritis? And I hope this video helped you get a little more clarity so that when you go see your doctor with joint pain, you can guide your doctors what type of joint you might be having and that'll help your doctors get to the right diagnosis on time. As we discussed, finding the diagnosis at the time is so important in these form of arthritis so that we can treat the disease.

And in particular, if it is an inflammatory form, early treatment, and early lifestyle interventions help decrease joint damage. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please don't forget to like and subscribe to our channel so that you can get similar content in the future and it will also help our team to do better and give us some feedback on how you like the video today. We are making some changes so we can make our content better. We are trying to make it more practical to you so that you can apply so we can make you feel better.

And our goal in our channel is to move from pain to the possibility and confusion to clarity. So help us give us some feedback on how we are doing. I'll see you in the next video. Bye bye.