Health condition

Centre Santé A-1 FAQ – Health condition

What is Arthritis?

Arthritis may manifest itself as pain in the neck or back or shoulders or knees.

Symptoms of arthritis include pain and limited function of joints. Inflammation of the joints from arthritis is characterized by joint stiffness, swelling, redness, and warmth. Tenderness of the inflamed joint can be present.

What is Carpal Tunnel Syndrome?

Carpal tunnel syndrome is a condition in which there is pressure on the nerve in the wrist that supplies feeling and movement to parts of the hand. It can lead to numbness, tingling, weakness, or muscle damage in the hand and fingers. It may finally result in weakness in the hand and forearm.

What is Chronic Bronchitis?

Chronic bronchitis is a type of COPD that causes inflammation or irritation in the airways of the lungs. This irritation causes increased mucus production within the lungs that over time, interferes with breathing.

What is Edema?

Symptoms of edema include swelling of the subcutaneous tissue (tissue under the skin), and stretched-looking or shiny skin. Edema is most noticeable in the arms, hands, legs and feet. Pain in the joints is often accompanied by swelling, because the irritation of the joints can cause subcutaneous fluid leakage. Edema can also cause some stiffness in the wrists and ankles because of the puffiness.

What is Intercostal Neuralgia?

Intercostal neuralgia is a rare pain condition involving the nerves that supply the muscles between the ribs. In patients with intercostal neuralgia, bands of pain around the rib cage are experienced. The pain is usually intermittent and spasmodic. Intensity can vary, depending on a number of factors.

What is Lumbago?

Lumbago is an umbrella term for lower back pain, which can be caused by a variety of issues from sudden strain to tumors.

The most obvious symptom of lumbago is, of course, lower back pain which may radiate into the upper legs. Patients may also experience stiffness in their lower backs, especially when rising in the morning, along with painful muscle spasms in the lower back. A tingling sensation in the lower legs and feet sometimes accompanies lumbago as well, and patients may develop a spinal curvature as their bodies respond to the pain.

What is Muscle Tension Pain?

Muscle tension refers to the condition in which muscles of the body remain semi-contracted for an extended period. Muscle tension is typically caused by the physiological effects of stress and can lead to episodes of back pain.

Stress may change the body’s nervous system by constricting blood vessels and reducing blood flow to the soft tissues, including muscles, tendons and nerves in the back. This process causes a decrease in oxygen and a buildup of biochemical waste products in the muscles, resulting in muscle tension, spasm and sometimes back pain.

What is Muscular Rheumatism?

Muscular rheumatism might also be known as “myalgia”. This condition in which there is more or less permanent soreness, stiffness, and perhaps sharp, acute pain in the structure of the muscles, especially of the deep muscles of the body ultimately extends to the fibrous tissue and to the membrane of the bones.

What is Poor Circulation?

Arteries carry pure blood from the heart (with oxygen and other important nutrients) to all parts of the body and veins carry deoxygenated blood from different parts of the body back to the heart. Any deficiency in the circulatory mechanism affects the whole body or the particular part where the blood is not circulating well. Nerves and tissues get severely affected because of poor circulation. This is a problem faced by many individuals, especially the aged.

What is Post-Herpetic Neuralgia?

Post-Herpetic Neuralgia is the most common complication of shingles and also the persistence of the pain associated with shingles beyond 1 month, even after the rash is gone.

What is Rheumatism?

Rheumatism is a popular but indefinite term for a variety of disorders marked by inflammation, degeneration, or derangement of connective tissue structures such as joints causing pain, stiffness, or limitation of motion; it includes such disorders as arthritis, osteoarthritis, bursitis, and sciatica.

Ex. Rheumatism arthritis is a chronic and painful disorder which can attack the joints on your arms and legs leaving them inflamed and swollen.

What is Sciatica?

Sciatica describes the symptoms of leg pain and possible tingling, numbness or weakness that originates in the lower back and travels through the buttock and down the large sciatic nerve in the back of the leg.

In addition to pain, which is sometimes severe, there may be muscular weakness, and difficulty in moving or controlling the leg.

What is a Sprain?

A sprain is a joint injury in which some of the fibers of a supporting ligament are ruptured and you have stretched and possibly torn the ligaments in your joint.

What is Stress?

Stress is your body’s way of responding to any kind of demand. It may be caused by both good and bad experiences. When people feel stressed by something going on around them, their bodies react by releasing chemicals into the blood. These chemicals may give people more energy and strength, which can be a good thing if their stress is caused by physical danger. But this might also be a bad thing, if their stress is in response to something emotional and there is no outlet for this extra energy and strength.

Ex. Internal stress is when people make themselves stressed. This often happens when we worry about things we can’t control.

Feeling tired and overworked – This can be one of the hardest kinds of stress to avoid because many people feel this is out of their control.

What is “Swelling”?

Swelling is a condition of localized fluid retention to any body parts.

Swelling of the tissue may occur after an injury or post-surgery around a joint or in the whole limb. It can also be more generalized or systemic due to heart or kidney issues as well as specific for conditions such as lymphedema.

What is a Temporal Headache?

This is better known as Temporal Arteritis (current term), a headache caused by inflamed arteries in the head or neck and may also be characterized by difficulty chewing and sometimes visual impairment.

What is Tendonitis?

Tendonitis is inflammation, irritation, and swelling of a tendon, which is the fibrous structure that joins muscle to bone. Overuse is the most common cause of tendonitis. Usually very flexible, tendons can tighten and tear if they’re overworked, which results in tendonitis.

What is Tri-facial Neuralgia?

It may manifest itself as a cluster headache or lower-half headache or severe unilateral pain behind the eye that spreads to the temple and behind the ear. It could last 30 minutes to 3 hours and occur once to several times a day and in cycles or clusters lasting several weeks. The clusters may be separated by several months or years. No trigger zones exist.

What is Upper Arm and Shoulder Pain?

Upper Arm pain can be short-term if it is caused by a strain, and not very painful. However, certain conditions lead to severe arm pain and weakness and need medical attention. Repetitive wrist movement leads to intersection syndrome which causes pain in the arm.

Shoulder pain is any pain in or around the shoulder joint.

Swelling, damage, or bone changes around the rotator cuff can cause shoulder pain. You may have pain when lifting the arm above your head or moving it forward or behind your back. An underlying health problem like arthritis can be responsible for shoulder pain while sleeping. In such cases, the pain arises because of inflammation in the joint. Elderly people tend to get extreme pain in shoulder as the soft connective tissues degenerate with aging.