The Arthritic Cosmological Principle
When I attended a meeting recently quite a few people expressed concern about my health given that I turned up with a walking-stick. I’ve actually been using one on occasions for quite a few months now, and it may well become a regular accessory, so to avoid anyone else I meet wondering what’s going on I thought I’d post a brief explanation.
Over the past six months or so I’ve had an increasing problem with swelling and stiffness in my knees. This is worst in the morning when I’ve just got out of bed, in which situation my knees are invariably bright red.
You can see what I mean in the picture here (viewer discretion advised). The stiffness sometimes makes me a bit wobbly on my pins and makes it a bit tricky dealing with stairs. I use the stick more for balance than anything else, and once I get going I can walk quite comfortably. I spent most of a day walking around Copenhagen without ill effects when I visited there in February.
I’ve been to the doctor several times about this and, although I’m still waiting for various test results, it’s clear that I have some form of arthritis. For the time being I’m just taking an anti-inflammatory drug which is quite effective at reducing the swelling. In due course I may be put on other medication, possibly involving a course of injections, and maybe even surgery. I’ll just have to wait and see about that.
The important thing is that, although I’m not exactly thrilled to have arthritis, I’m not in any real pain. It’s just a bit uncomfortable, that’s all, though that does make it hard to concentrate sometimes and it has impacted on my capacity to work long hours. I am sorry that I have missed some deadlines as a result.
You may or may not know that I used to run a lot when I was younger, including a few marathons and half-marathons. This has caused me some problems with my knees before, and I had minor surgery (arthroscopy) about 15 years ago to help with this. That procedure went pretty well, but I was warned that I was a relatively high risk for arthritis. It looks like the doctor wasn’t wrong! My running days are well and truly over, that’s for sure.
One other thing worth mentioning is that this condition does seem to be highly temperature-dependent. This last week the weather suddenly turned a lot colder and the arthritis definitely got worse. Perhaps in future I could learn to use the colour of my knees as some kind of forecasting method?
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In the Dark 
April 7, 2019 at 10:24 pm
Avoid salty and fatty food and also processed food containing a lot of preservative agents. Certain types of bread may also not help if eaten in descent quantity. You may alternate between tap water and demineralized water.
When you wake up, if you don’t have any difficulty to move your fingers it means it is not rheumatoid arthritis.
April 8, 2019 at 11:25 am
I hope very much that it continues not to cause real pain. Perhaps my ankle injury when I was moving up from 5-mile to 10-mile runs in my mid-30s was a blessing in disguise…
April 8, 2019 at 11:53 am
I should have listened to the advice I got about not running so much on roads and pavements!
April 8, 2019 at 12:38 pm
I thought that the point of trainers was to make pavement running similar to barefoot soil running for which we are designed.
April 8, 2019 at 1:51 pm
Perhap’s `Blogger’s Knee’ is a thing, like `Tennis Elbow’?
April 8, 2019 at 3:09 pm
Perhaps I should use some other sort of joint…
April 8, 2019 at 3:46 pm
telescoper, I believe I have the cure!
and it’s cheap and simple, I suffered for years with arthritis,it’s been 6 0r 7 years now since I had an attack
6 or 7 years since I began with this
create a habit of drinking apple cider vinegar daily
adopt it as a regime,
and I cannot emphasise this enough
STICK AT IT!!
you must continue with it
it wont show results for perhaps weeks but be assured it will eventually
my recipe is:
a tablespoon of vinegar,
the juice of one lemon
a tablespoon of honey and some chopped ginger root,
my method is to boil the ginger root in a pan,
then off the boil add the rest of the ingredients
pour into a glass
It’s the vinegar that does the trick ,but who wants to drink raw vinegar?
this makes a nice cordial of it, and is a refreshing waty to start the day
to reiterate, this must become a habit
” oh I did try it for a few days” is no good!
apple cider vinegar,organic, and with the mother,
the mother is what is thrown away when vinegar is filtered
April 8, 2019 at 4:02 pm
Sounds revolting.
April 8, 2019 at 7:10 pm
My approach to achy joints, and aches in general, is a rich vitamin C cocktail. My favorite is chopped up Mango fruit and chopped up Pineapple, but other fruits work just as well. I blend them in a third of a cup of water till liquefied. It tastes really good. But you have to use very fresh fruit for maximum vitamin content. I usually follow this drink with a multivitamin pill.
Luckily, I never took up running on a serious basis because I have a heart murmur. Instead I bicycle almost daily from March to November, from 10 to 23 miles per ride. It’s much easier on the knees and feet, as you are not carrying your body weight. I’ve heard that the body naturally produces Human Growth Hormone (HGH) in response to exercise, which heals and rejuvenates things. My twin brother tore cartilage in his knee when he jumped about 3 feet off the prow of a boat rising and falling with the waves. He had HGH therapy on the damaged knee in Colorado, and it healed up just fine.
August 10, 2019 at 1:16 pm
[…] I came out as having arthritis a few months ago, I’m sure all both my readers are agog to hear news about the state of my knees. […]