What Are The Warning Signs of Arthritis In Your Hands?

If you constantly find yourself using your hands throughout the day, whether at work or at home, it’s safe to say that you might experience just a bit more discomfort than the usual individual. For instance, if you spend most of the day at work typing on a keyboard, your hands could feel sore at the end of the day. Perhaps you’re an avid musician, a pianist, or a violinist? Your fingers could bother you after a practice session.

This type of pain is rather common; however, it is important to note that whenever you experience hand pain, you always have to be sure that you understand just where that pain is coming from. So, how exactly do you tell when the pain in your hand is something a bit more serious? What are the warning signs for arthritis that we should look for?

Take a look down below!

Let’s Look At The Symptoms

Before we begin to self-diagnose ourselves with arthritis, let’s take a look at some of the most common and telling symptoms that individuals with arthritis in their hands most often experience. Typically, arthritis causes pain when moving and resting, joint stiffness, swelling and inflammation, joint deformity, and even muscle loss and weakness.

In addition, there are three different types of arthritis that can have an impact on these symptoms and moderate their intensity. For instance, osteoarthritis is caused by degenerative changes in cartilage, rheumatoid arthritis is caused by an autoimmune condition, and post-traumatic arthritis is a type of osteoarthritis that is often caused by some sort of injury, damage, or other trauma.

Back To Your Hand – What Does It Feel Like?

Depending on the types of symptoms that you’re experiencing, your previous injury or trauma history, or any relevant autoimmune condition that you may or may not have, you could narrow down the cause of your symptoms rather quickly. However, for many of us, the guessing game is much harder.

When it comes to osteoarthritis, you may see you’re the joints of your middle fingers develop lumps, your top finger joint near the nail might develop a bump, you might feel pain and discomfort under the base of the thump, and you’ll probably have some difficulty pinching and gripping objects.

With rheumatoid arthritis, you’ll feel some pain in your wrist and knuckles, you’ll experience deformities in your wrists and fingers, and you might even experience flu-like aches all throughout your body, which can sometimes be a cause for alarm!

With post-traumatic arthritis, the pain is almost always present in the area in which you experienced an injury, damage, or trauma. From there, there is potential for deformity, which can get worse over time.

How Do You Treat It?

If you feel confident that you may have any of the above described symptoms, or any of the three different forms of arthritis, we encourage you to reach out to your orthopedic provider today to receive the proper form of treatment. Remember, arthritis doesn’t have to be a game-changer for you. It’s time that you receive the help that you deserve.