Arthritis Myth: You have arthritis because you are old

In my office, we frequently take students from local universities to give them exposure to real-life clinical cases to complement their academic education. I was recently having a discussion with my student about a patient who has moderate to severe arthritis in her right knee. I asked him why he thinks she developed arthritis. His response, “Because she is old”. The look I gave him let him know pretty quickly that he had given the wrong answer and he fumbled to come up with alternatives. Unfortunately, the “you have arthritis because you are old” refrain is fairly common among the public and unfortunately among healthcare professionals as well. I pointed out to my student that this patient did not have arthritis in her other knee and that both knees were the same age. So if a person has 2 knees, both the same age, both have walked the same number of miles and climbed the same number of stairs and one has arthritis and the other does not, it defies logic to blame age for the condition.  

YOU DO NOT GET ARTHRITIS BECAUSE YOU ARE OLD.

Certainly, instances of arthritis increase as age advances, but this is a correlation and not a cause. It is so important for people and healthcare providers to understand that citing age as the cause for arthritis removes any specter of hope that someone with arthritis can ever feel better. There is only one remedy for advancing age… and that’s death. Therefore, if you think that you have arthritis pain because you are old you are really saying I will have this pain until I die, and it will probably get worse every day.

I have worked with many patients who have come to me with that outlook, and now I get excited when I do. I get excited because there is no better feeling than to watch a person realize that there is hope when they thought there was none. I get to watch them get excited about their future and start to think about all the things they could be instead of all the things they cannot. By no means am I saying that arthritic changes will reverse, and you can feel like you did when you were 24 years old, but there are plenty of things that you can do to feel better at any age.

The next question I get is, “So if I didn’t get arthritis because I’m old then why did I get it?” That is a much more complicated question to answer. There are many causes for arthritis including genetics, systemic or immunological factors, skeletal alignment, body composition, general health, activity level, general flexibility just to name a few. Some of these things are changeable, some we can accommodate, and others we are stuck with. Time provides an opportunity for these factors to impact our health and that’s why arthritis is found disproportionately in older folks. These many factors and how they interplay with each other over time are the true causes for arthritis, age is not.

If you spend your time focusing on the things you can improve you can feel better than you do. This is possible at any age and any stage of arthritis. We are never too old to improve. If making progress becomes your goal, and not attaining perfection, then there is always the opportunity for success no matter your age. When you begin to understand the true causes for arthritic conditions, you can release yourself from the false constraints imposed by “old age”, begin to improve your condition and start getting back to doing the things you love to do.