Cyndi: Everyone’s familiar with arthritis, but do you know that it does not have to be a life sentence? Arthritis is a life-altering form of pain for so many people, but Dr. Rudy Gari from Florida Pain Relief Group is here to help. Welcome back, Dr. Gari.
Dr. Gari: Thank you.
Cyndi: So we all hear about arthritis, we talk about arthritis, but really what is arthritis?
Dr. Gari: So arthritis, if you break down the word, so itis means inflammation, and arthro means joints. So arthritis is basically an inflammation of your joints. And of course, your joints are what keeps the bones together. So you have joints throughout the entire body. That’s what allows us to bend and do things. So that can cause a lot of wear and tear. That wear and tear leads to inflammation. There are nerve endings in those joints, and it can get pretty painful.
Cyndi: We’ve heard of different types of arthritis. What’s the most common?
Dr. Gari: The most common type of arthritis is osteoarthritis.
Cyndi: Osteo?
Dr. Gari: Yes. In fact, most of us get some sort of arthritis. Even our late 20s it begins, 30s and 40s.
Cyndi: Is it pretty much inevitable that we’re all going to get some form of arthritis?
Dr. Gari: Unfortunately, most of us as we get older, we are gonna get arthritis. It doesn’t mean that you have to know that you have it. You kinda get these aches and so forth throughout the day. But most of us go about our daily lives just, you know, living as if nothing’s going on.
Cyndi: But there are some people their arthritis affects their everyday life and it can really be hard for them to function. So what can you do for people who have arthritis, either in the early stage or quite gradual?
Dr. Gari: The first thing that we do is to determine the type of arthritis, and that helps us to determine what the outcome might be. So let’s just say osteoarthritis, for example, because that’s really common. A lot of times, osteoarthritis causes joint pain everywhere. Most of the pain tends to be low back, cervical region. Our necks hold the head up. Our lower backs help us bend back-and-forth. Those are the daily activities. So we tend to focus on those joints because that’s what’s gonna improve your daily living as much as possible. Things that we can do, we mentioned that’s inflammation of the joints, so what we do is go in there to reduce the inflammation. Some sort of injections goes into those joints, there’s no surgery that’s involved. Two or three of these, if it relieves inflammation, there’s even other things such as radiofrequency, rhizotomies that I’ve mentioned before, that can help burn the little nerve endings that only cause pain.
Cyndi: Wow. We’ve heard about taking turmeric and things like that, and adding more things to our diet to help with inflammation, but that’s not necessarily going to be enough, is it?
Dr. Gari: What happens when you eat something, whether it’s a pill or whatever, it goes in your mouth and through your stomach, and then from there it gets absorbed, goes through your liver, and 95% gets broken down. So a very tiny, tiny fraction of what you’re taking is actually going to those joints. By us delivering the medication straight to those joints, we bypass all that.
Cyndi: Is it always a type of medication that you recommend, or do you have different therapies for arthritis?
Dr. Gari: Different therapies. Sometimes, actually, just moving around. Physical therapy, moving. I ask them to go in the pool, just move your joints more. Sleep. If you can get better sleep, your joints are gonna absorb some more fluid. That’s going to help out as well.
Cyndi: Right, but if you’re finding that it’s really hard to function, you can help.
Dr. Gari: Yes, we can.
Cyndi: You can get right in there and take care of it.
Dr. Gari: Absolutely.
Cyndi: Good stuff. Dr. Gari, thank you very much. Contact Florida Pain Relief Group to schedule your same-day appointment. You can visit their website, it is floridapainreliefgroup.com. Or you can give them a call right now, 844-KICK-PAIN, and you too can be pain-free. Thank you, again.
Dr. Gari: My pleasure.
Cyndi: We’ll be right back.
