Osteoarthritis is a degenerative disease which affects most people who are over 40. This means as you grow older you are more at risk of getting this disease.  As the cartilage tissues surrounding your joints get worn out as you age, it causes inflammation and swelling in the affected joints and is called osteoarthritis. This is one disease which an affect any joint in your whole body like hands, knees, spin, hips and even finger where all the joints are affected.  Cartilage is the hard and slippery tissue which is found covering the ends of bones at joints. When the cartilage is healthy it allows the bones to glide one over the other much easily but when the cartilage gets worn out as we grow older the bones meet and rub against one another causing pain and swelling. Sometimes bits of bones called bone spurs can grow in the joints causing more pain.

The risk factors of osteoarthritis are which affect many people are  old age, obesity, bone deformities,  sex, joint injuries, and bone and joint diseases like gout, septic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Paget’s disease of the bones .It has been found that women  and people who have had previous injuries in their joints are more susceptible to this disease.

Another of the risk factors of osteoarthritis is that as the disease advances most people find that they become immobile due to the swelling and inflammation and pain. Osteoarthritis is known to advance with time and become worse as there is no known cure for its treatment so the disease cannot be wiped out from one’s system.  The only way is to manage the disease wisely by exercise and medication so that you remain active as you age.

But the main risk factors of osteoarthritis are the inflammatory disorders that can be caused by the disease like gout, rheumatoid arthritis, and septic arthritis. Gout is a condition where excessive uric acid crystals get deposited in the tissues of the body causing further inflammation of the joints.  Gouty arthritis is known to cause intense painful attacks of the joints. In rheumatoid arthritis which is an inflammatory disorder that accompanies osteoarthritis is an autoimmune disease where the white blood corpuscles fail to recognize foreign bodies like viruses that attack the body and instead attack the tissues of the body causing infections. Septic arthritis is another one of the risk factors of osteoarthritis in which bacteria spreading through the blood stream to the joints cause inflammation.