Muscle and joint pain throughout the body: causes and treatment

When an unpleasant sensation occurs in a certain part, this is of course the source of the problem for the patient, but the pain of the whole body is much more painful. In this case, even daily activities will fade out of the background because they become difficult to perform.

Many people are familiar with the feelings of weakness, fatigue, and pain that interfere with active life. Similarly, common pain in muscles, bones or joints cannot be ignored. She must force the patient to make a decision quickly to find out the reason and nature of further measures. But for this, you need to see a doctor first.

reason

If the muscles and joints all over the body are aching, the first thing to do is to figure out what the relationship is.

This wide area of sensation has to push patients and doctors toward the idea of systemic disease. People should not look for the cause in the individual tissues of the musculoskeletal system, but should look for the cause in the function of the entire organism and its system. At the same time, it is difficult to understand what is really injured: muscles, bones or joints. This sensation is all over the body and there is no precise positioning. However, despite this, similar situations in some states are very typical. These include the following:

  • Physical stress.
  • Infectious diseases.
  • Connective tissue pathology.
  • Blood disease.
  • Tumor process.
  • Nervous system disease.

As you can see, the pathology is very diverse and severe. If you don't consider the full physiological causes of muscle weakness and pain, then you need to be very careful about the possibility of these diseases. The doctor's consultation is never superfluous.

After a doctor's clinical examination, we can infer the origin of joint and muscle pain throughout the body.

symptom

Shoulder pain

Any pathology has its characteristics. All performances should be considered, even if they are trivial. To determine the diseases that affect the condition of muscles and joints, it is necessary to analyze the main complaint and objective symptoms of the patient.

Since pain is the most common symptom, its possible characteristics need to be considered:

  1. Pain, burning, cutting, or tingling.
  2. It is located in the area of muscles, bones or joints.
  3. Feeling in the same area of the body or unstable.
  4. Permanent or regular.
  5. Medium, strong or weak.

It may be accompanied by feelings of weakness, fatigue or pain. If the cause of the pain is a general disease of the body, then other symptoms will definitely appear, which will indicate the source of the problem.

Physical stress

Neck and joint pain

First, you should rule out situations that almost everyone may face. Excessive physical activity can cause muscle strain, which affects the sensation of different parts of the body. Pain and weakness are related to the accumulation of lactic acid in the tissues and the micro-damage of fibers. Therefore, sore throat will develop over time. It should be remembered that this process only involves muscles and there should be no other symptoms.

If you exclude physical overwork, then you must look for more serious causes of pain.

Infectious disease

Colds are the cause of joint pain

Anyone who has ever had a respiratory infection is familiar with bone and muscle pain. Even mediocre ARI is accompanied by such symptoms. What can we say about more serious pathologies, such as influenza, meningitis, hemorrhagic fever, leptospirosis, and Lyme disease? Flying pain is characteristic of brucellosis and epidemic myalgia. In many cases, this feeling is the result of microbial poisoning. Infectious diseases are accompanied by other symptoms:

  • fever.
  • Coughing, sneezing.
  • rash.
  • Nausea, diarrhea.
  • Headache.
  • General weakness.

Joint pain can even bother patients with liver damage-viral hepatitis. In this case, the severity of the right side flank, yellowing of the skin, and decreased appetite are characteristic. We must not forget the possibility of parasite invasion, such as trichinosis, where muscle pain has important diagnostic value.

The spectrum of infectious pathology is very wide, so it is necessary to find out the cause of body pain in time.

Connective tissue pathology

Lupus erythematosus is the cause of joint pain

If muscles and joints are injured, the patient must be examined to determine systemic diseases: lupus erythematosus, polymyositis, scleroderma, rheumatoid arthritis. They are autoimmune and occur with damage to connective tissue, which is present in all body systems. In this case, you should pay attention to the following features:

  1. Symmetrical injuries to the hand joints with characteristic deformities-in rheumatoid arthritis.
  2. Redness of the butterfly-shaped skin-lupus erythematosus.
  3. Weakness of the limbs and neck muscles-polymyositis.
  4. Thickened skin on the fingers, mask-like face-scleroderma.

Another disease with systemic manifestations should be mentioned-rheumatism. Although microorganisms (streptococci) become the trigger, autoimmune processes will develop in the future. For this disease, flying pain in the joints will be characteristic.

Connective tissue diseases are accompanied by damage to internal organs: heart, lungs, kidneys, blood vessels and nervous system.

Blood disease

Arthralgia blood test

Diseases of the hematopoietic system are a common cause of bone pain. Unfortunately, most of them are malignant, so everyone knows that the characteristic signs of this pathology are useful. In addition to physical pain, leukemia also has the following symptoms:

  • The temperature rises.
  • Swollen lymph nodes.
  • Bleeding in various locations.
  • Pale complexion.
  • Enlarged spleen and liver.
  • Prone to infection.

In addition, shortness of breath, general weakness, loss of appetite, and nodules on the skin may cause discomfort. The acute form of leukemia has obvious manifestations, and without proper treatment, it will pose a serious threat to life.

Tumor process

Swelling is the cause of joint pain

Pain in the bones, joints or muscles of the whole body can appear in the structure of paraneoplastic syndrome, which is a characteristic of various malignant tumors. It is caused by metabolic, immune and other diseases related to the primary process. Arthropathy or bone disease is often observed, similar to various rheumatism. Similar signs appeared long before the tumor process was detected.

In addition, the "cancer poisoning" observed in patients with advanced tumors and metastases may cause bone pain. In addition to the indicated symptoms, the general disease will dominate the clinical manifestations of the disease:

  1. Great weakness.
  2. Weight loss until exhaustion (cachexia).
  3. Loss of appetite, nausea.
  4. The skin is pale with a gray, jaundice, or blue tint.
  5. fever.
  6. Depressed and irritable.

These signs significantly aggravate the patient's condition and adversely affect the prognosis of the disease.

More attention must be paid to early detection of tumors, which is only possible through regular preventive examinations.

Nervous system disease

Hand joint pain

If the patient feels pain in the muscles, joints, or bones, the problem may even lie in the nervous system. Similar symptoms are often observed in polyneuropathy. The disease can be located in different ways, but the lower limbs are most susceptible. In this case, the following symptoms will appear:

  • Numbness, tingling, burning, crawling "goose bumps".
  • Sensitivity is reduced.
  • Changes in the severity of reflexes.
  • Muscle weakness and atrophy.
  • Thinning of the skin, hair loss, and dryness.

Polyneuropathy can cause severe pain and severely affect the quality of life of patients.

diagnosis

The doctor prescribes the treatment of joint pain

After the clinical examination, it is necessary to use other methods that help determine the correct diagnosis. Given the wide range of possible pathologies, doctors will need a variety of laboratory and instrument tools. These include the following:

  1. General analysis of blood and urine.
  2. Biochemical blood test (infectious antigen, rheumatism test, tumor markers, acute phase indicators, liver function test, etc. ).
  3. Bacteriological analysis of blood and body secretions.
  4. Bone marrow biopsy.
  5. Computer and magnetic resonance imaging.
  6. Nerve EMG.

It is necessary to consult rheumatologists, infectious disease specialists, oncologists, hematologists and neuropathologists.

Based on the results of the comprehensive examination, a final conclusion can be made on the origin of bone or muscle pain.

treatment

After the diagnosis is established, the doctor will decide on further measures. The treatment strategy will depend on the type of disease, the prevalence and the patient's physical condition. It is difficult to formulate a general treatment plan for all diseases that may be accompanied by joint, muscle, and bone pain or soreness. It all depends on the specific situation, which determines the use of conservative or operational techniques.

medical treatement

Joint pain medicine

The main treatment for most diseases is the use of drugs. It is hard to imagine modern medicine without them. A wide range of drugs can allow you to affect almost all pathological development mechanisms and their causes. With the advent of certain drugs, it has become easier to treat serious diseases.

According to the established diagnosis and clinical situation, the following drugs can be used to treat systemic pain:

  • Antibiotics and antiparasitic drugs.
  • Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.
  • Hormones (glucocorticoids).
  • Cytostatic and immunosuppressive agents.
  • Detox.

Many drugs have serious contraindications to tumor diseases. This applies to vitamins and metabolites. Their use can promote the progression of pathological processes. Of course, the complexity of treatment may include other drugs that affect the symptoms of individuals with the disease.

The medicine must meet the generally accepted standards of treatment and can only be prescribed by a doctor.

operation treatment

Surgical treatment of joint pain

Surgery may be applied to tumors or blood diseases. In the first case, the pathological focus is removed along with the regional lymph nodes. Given the nature of the disease, subsequent arrangements for radiotherapy are possible. For progressive leukemia in the context of conservative treatment, bone marrow transplantation is recommended.

Pain in the musculoskeletal and joint system that covers almost the entire body can be a serious problem. Early diagnosis and active treatment will help prevent complications and improve the prognosis of any disease.