"Muddle" > wrote
>>
> I don't think osteoarthritis or degenerative bone disease has much to do
> with age or diet. Repetitive motion outside the normal range of motion or
> in other words constant abuse of joints and the tendons which hold those
> joints in place causes it. Every pee wee football participant who
> performed
> daily neck bridges at twelve years of age has at thirty years of age bone
> spurs and osteoarthritis in their neck. It's why our mothers told us not
> to
> crack our knuckles. I'm in my late forties and was diagnosed with
> degenerative bone disease over twenty years ago in my neck. My doctors
> don't suggest any exercise other than a brisk walk as the next accident
> could be my last. Arthritis and Osteoarthritis are two different beasts.
> Given what you've said you could have it and an xray of your hands would
> show bone loss and bone spurs. The term osteo means bone.
>

I was thinking of osteoarthritis vs Rheumatoid Arthritis--or maybe I don't
have
it right? I have always had a dread of the latter, as my father's mother was
diagnosed with it in her early twenties and was bedridden from twenty-five
to her death in her early sixties. Every time I have complete blood tests I
have them test for it.

I have something similar to what you have in your neck, in my own neck,
from an auto accident when I was 17. I had it treated with chiropractic
early on, then took a few more hard blows to the head and face in my
twenties and it began seizing up again. (It may just be misalignment but
I believe the chiropractor said if I did not have it regularly treated it
would probably become degenerative, and I have not ...)

I am a little afraid of physicians when it comes to bone and joint problems.
But I will see one about my fingers eventually. It's odd, it is in the last
joints
of my little fingers! So while not really debilitating, it is annoying. The
really
strange thing my doctor cannot figure out: when I take Advair (the inhalant
steroid mix for preventing asthma symptoms) I have no joint pain and no back
pain.
(Another fall down the steps while sleepwalking gave me sciatica, another
story ...) Someone speculated that the anti-inflammatory effects of the
steroids, which certainly enter my bloodstream via my lungs, are enough
to affect my joints. Who knows. Anyway, I am on a break from the Advair
now, and that is the only reason I am thinking about the "twinges."