Arthritis is a condition which is more commonly considered as an issue for the elderly and while it’s true that a much higher proportion of older people suffer from it, that doesn’t mean that it’s only them. Something like one quarter of all arthritis sufferers worldwide are under the age of 66 and people as young as one or two years old have been known to contract the condition. As I say, it’s much less common in younger people but that doesn’t make it impossible. Arthritis should never be a condition which you simply assume you’re not going to get.
It can be really tricky to diagnose children with arthritis because so many of the symptoms are so similar to day-to-day issues children have. Aches and pains can be explained away by them playing too hard or falling over too often. Having some issues getting around might be caused by too much rushing around the day before and any permanent pain might be forgotten about or ignored. Every parent knows that their children aren’t the most reliable resources when it comes to diagnosing their own conditions.
Once it’s been diagnosed, arthritis can be much more damaging as a condition for kids than it would be for their elderly counterparts. This is because children are generally much more active than elderly people are so any loss of mobility is going to affect them much more profoundly.
It’s recently been shown that a child’s mood can directly affect their arthritis. Stress and depression particularly have been shown to be strong exacerbating factors for the illness and as such it’s important to make an arthritic child’s life as relaxed and care free as you can manage. They’re already having to deal with a disease which might be preventing them from playing with their friends, you don’t want it to get worse because they’re upset about it!
Comments are closed.