Your joints are critical to your body’s mobility, making them vulnerable to injuries and pain. Getting a comprehensive exam from joint pain specialists can be an important start as it is a step towards managing your condition to get your quality of life back. For expert care of joint pain in Reston, the Town Center Orthopaedic Associates team can help. Understanding the reasons behind your pain is a crucial step in knowing which treatment option best suits you. The following are some possible reasons why your joints are aching.

  1.     Maybe it is a Matter of Age

Your joints support you in every motion, and they have been supporting your entire life. This means that as you age, the bones can wear out, especially your hips and joints, as they carry much weight. With age, the cartilage, a gel-like substance that cushions your joints, wears down with time. Therefore, joint pain can become familiar to you as you age.

  1.     Your Older Injury is Stirring Up Complications

If you had an injury earlier in your life, it could increase your joint pain risks whether it was treated or not. Therefore, if you had a ligament tear, bone fracture, or tendon issue, your joint pain risks are higher, and therefore it is good to be careful.

  1.     Bursitis

Joint pain can mean that you are dealing with bursitis. This is a condition where your bursa swells. This is a small fluid-filled sac between your bones and other moving body parts such as tendons and muscles. When bursitis causes swelling on your joint, you can experience pain, particularly on your ankles, knees, hips, wrists, elbows, and shoulders. You can also develop this condition due to an unrelated injury such as limping, which can occur if you suffered low back pain. In this case, your bursitis can develop in your hip or knee.

  1.     You Might Have Gout

This is one of the most painful arthritis types where you experience symptoms such as redness, swelling, heat, and hard to ignore pain, particularly that begins from your big toe and spreads to other joints. This occurs when you overeat proteins, as this makes your body produce a lot of uric acids that it can’t excrete entirely.

The main risk factor to this condition is protein overload, although you can increase the risks if you carry too much weight, drink too much alcohol, take some medications, or get dehydrated.

  1.     Infectious Arthritis

If there is one reason why you should take proper care of a cut or a puncture wound is that it can get infected with common bacteria. What follows is intense swelling and pain in the affected area, followed by a fever and chills. In this case, the knees are the most affected joints, but the wrist, ankles, and hips can also be affected.

  1.     Rheumatoid Arthritis

This condition disproportionately targets women and is characterized by swollen joints, tenderness, and stiffness in the morning. You can also experience unexplained weight loss, fatigue, and fever. As a new mother, you can experience lousy inflammation in your hands, making it difficult to care for your baby.

Knowing why you are experiencing joint pain will help you know the best treatment option to go for. The list is inexhaustible, but one of these issues could be causing your joint pain. To learn more, the Town Center Orthopaedic Associates team can help you.