Your Joints Protest! How Obesity Weighs your Down

Rheumatoid Arthritis is an autoimmune disorder which causes inflammation in a patient’s joints and can lead to gradually worsening mobility, chronic pain and eventually disfigurement. An autoimmune condition is one in which the body perceives part of itself as a threat and attack it with its own immune system. Immune responses to most things involve swelling of one kind or another and for this reason the joints of rheumatoid arthritics become inflamed and immobile.

Obesity now plays a factor in most of the major conditions we see in the world. It’s never a positive influence on anything and as such should be avoided at all costs. For some people it’s a genetic predisposition and it can be very hard not to fall down the slippery slope towards obesity. Regardless of its cause, obesity is going to exacerbate most existing conditions and if you’re very unlucky it could create its own too.
Rheumatoid arthritis falls into both of these categories. Being heavier is going to put much more strain on your joints than there would be on those of a person of average weight, meaning any inflammation or degradation is going to get much worse much quicker. According to a huge study obesity also makes it far more likely for ladies to initially contract the condition than women of the same groupings who aren’t overweight. Of course once the condition is contracted it becomes chronic very quickly as the patients weight exacerbates the symptoms. A vicious circle if ever I saw one!

The only advice here is to watch your weight and do everything you can to keep it under control. There are all sorts of ways of doing this and everyone will have a method which works best for them. Just because one way didn’t work doesn’t mean others won’t so don’t give up!