Arthritis or muscular pain? How to differentiate; know from expert

Monsoon season not only brings along with it a host of diseases and infections, it also wreaks havoc with your bone and joint health. People with arthritis no wonder report flare-up of their symptoms during rainy season as all that humidity in the environment aggravates inflammation in joints. Another reason that works against your muscular and joint health during monsoon is the constant fluctuation in temperatures which ends up making your joints and muscles stiff and painful.

In all, you can attribute the aches and pains during this season to adverse weather conditions. Studies suggest that humidity and change in weather could lead to muscle weakness, stiffness in muscles and also swelling. While muscular pains can affect any part of the body, arthritis pain has a different pattern and will only affect your joints.

Even arthritis patients can report muscular pain during rainy season and it's important for them to differentiate between the signs of arthritis pain and muscular pain so that they take medications accordingly and get relief



sooner.

"Arthritis pain is pain arising from joint problem. It will be associated with stiffness of joint, swelling of joint and gritty feeling on joint movement. Muscular pain is usually away above or below the joint localised to a muscle group, associated with muscle spasm; the joint movement will be pain free and there will be no swelling in joint. Also, arthritis pain increases with putting load on joint or moving it," says Dr Ankit Chawla, Consultant Orthopaedics, Marengo QRG Hospital, Faridabad.

- Pain is usually dull aching

- You will have swelling in the affected joint

- The stiffness in your joint will be more in the morning and become dull later in the day

- Multiple joints are involved at same time when the pain is due to arthritis

- You may have gritty feeling on joint movement

- Joint area will be painful to touch