What is Rheumatoid Arthritis?

So your doctor told you that you're suffering from rheumatoid arthritis. But what does that mean? Rheumatoid Arthritis (or RA) is a chronic disorder that affects millions of people throughout the world and the United States. It is an autoimmune disease, which means, your body's immune system starts to defend itself against your own body. With RA, the immune system attacks the joints and causes severe inflammation and joint pain, even though there is no outside threat. When your joints are inflamed, joint pain causes your body to suffer significantly and the inflammation also leads to your body breaking down the cartilage between joints. This is significant because cartilage is what protects the bones in your joints from rubbing against each other and deteriorating. When that cartilage breaks down, it may be extremely painful and your joints can become inflamed and disfigured over time. RA can cause joint pain in hands, feet, shoulders, hips, and knees, and in some cases it results in pain in other parts of the body as well. Diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis can sometimes be challenging, but a key sign is that symptoms appear symmetrically on both sides of the body.

What is juvenile rheumatoid arthritis?

While it's true that most people who suffer from RA start to experience symptoms around the age of 40, in some cases, the same disease can strike a younger generation. Juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA or recently called juvenile idiopathic arthritis) is a childhood disease that causes painful and swollen joints. Symptoms of JRA can start to appear as young as 6 months old and can still appear up to 16 years old. In general, for JRA, the disease is divided into three kinds: Pauciarticular disease, Polyarticular disease, and Systematic disease. The symptoms a child with JRA suffers depends on the type of disease they have and may only affect a few joints in their body, or it may affect them systematically and cause problems with more than just joints, but also with tissue and organs as well. There are positive treatments for RA in children, although treatments and symptoms can vary significantly from adult RA.

Our Clinic

At the Arthritis Mend Clinic, we are dedicated to treating both children and adults who suffer from rheumatoid arthritis and juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Our medical team consists of high quality and professional doctors, nurses, and medical technicians who are here to explain RA symptoms easily and offer you different options for treatment of your disease. You'll find yourself comfortable working in our hands. It is our mission to successfully help you fight your symptoms and work toward aggressive management and relief in a way that is comfortable for you. Our services involve making a rheumatoid arthritis diagnosis and giving you rheumatoid arthritis help with choosing and facilitating treatment. We believe that education about a patient's disease is extremely important for a patient's recovery, which is why we also focus on providing comprehensive rheumatoid arthritis info to all our patients.

Our clinic has been treating arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis pain for over 15 years. In our experience, the medical team at our clinic has learned, practiced, and developed some of the most effective treatments available in the arthritis field. We are proud to be a medical board certified facility, accredited by the National Council of Medicine and the Doctors of America, and our team has been awarded numerous awards for excellence in practice and patient care. We accept nearly all forms of insurance and medicare at our clinic. Your care and your treatment is our first priority. Let us help you get your RA under control so you can go back to doing what you love.