Arthritis, Allergy & Auto-Immunity
We discuss arthritis, allergy and, in the right-hand column, various other kinds of sensitivity including sensitivity to wheat, dairy products, toxins, etc, together because all may involve the immune system of the body behaving abnormally. In arthritis this is excessive self-reactivity.
Allergy
Allergy is common but the word is abused and many symptoms are wrongly believed to be due to allergy when the explanation is quite different. There are kinds of sensitivity reaction, which are not allergic at all. The word 'allergy' was originally invented to signify a sensitivity reaction which was unexpected and seemed inappropriate because there had been contact with the same substance before, and without harm on that occasion. We now confine the term to conditions where the IgE antibody class is involved in causing this secondary or 'acquired' reaction.
It now seems that some kinds of food sensitivity including IBS are related to an increase in specific antibodies of the IgG class, so by definition not 'allergic'. All the same it can be useful to test for those antibodies and we have arrangements in place for that.
Auto-Immunity
Autoimmunity, obviously, means cases where the immune system has been wrongly directed to attack our own body - a huge topic that cannot be covered here and in some common types of disorder there is arthritis as one component, which is why they appear together on one page. Diagnosis is based largely on laboratory tests, more so now than ever before, and that gives us an advantage from the patient's point of view.
Arthritis
The word means exactly 'inflammation of the joints',
nothing more. If you have pain and swelling of one or more joints you
have arthritis, the word is no more sinister than that and there is no
need for that reason alone to regard yourself as an invalid. Of the
many different kinds of arthritis, some are pretty much equally
distributed; others are more common in women, for instance 'rheumatoid
arthritis'.
The most common type of all is osteoarthritis. Most books and
articles call it 'degenerative' (whatever that may mean) or say it is
due to overwork, injury or strain upon the affected joints. True and
false. There is no doubt that minor injury can make arthritis worse or
bring it on earlier. More nearly the truth is that many different
disease processes are lumped together under the name osteoarthritis
and that in many cases there is an active inflammatory process at work
based upon self-reactivity by the immune system, liable to get worse
as we grow older because the immune system accumulates errors over
time.
If you are worried about your arthritis, 21st Century offers
full evaluation including especially studies of the immune system and
inflammatory network, based in our own in-house laboratory. We then
proceed to arrange treatment for you, which may be physical because
maintaining muscle strength and maximum range of joint movement are
valuable, or anti-inflammatory, or may be directed at repair, or may
involve sophisticated methods of modifying the self-reactivity which
caused the damage in the first place. You should refer also to the
passage on 'Alternative and Complementary Approaches'. Many proven
treatments have come to the notice of doctors after coming into use
through the complementary and alternative medicine sector. We are not
too proud to learn.