Rheumatology is a young clinical medicine, because of a late start, people have less understanding of rheumatism, prone to misunderstandings. Rheumatology doctor often ask patients ask such questions when visiting rheumatism is What is rheumatism? "So what is rheumatism? In the end what is rheumatism?
What is rheumatism?
Rheumatism is a group of diseases that infiltrate joints, bones, muscles, blood vessels and other soft or connective tissue-related diseases and covers a wide range of diseases including diffuse connective tissue disease, spondyloarthropathies, degenerative arthritis, infection-related rheumatism Disease, metabolic and endocrine rheumatism, cancer-related rheumatism, non-joint rheumatism and other ten categories of more than 100 kinds of diseases, common systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjogren's syndrome, gout and high Uric acid, osteoarthritis, vasculitis, etc. Most of them are autoimmune diseases.
What is the immune system?
The immune system, in simple terms, protects our healthy army in our body.
Immune System The army consists of 'barracks' immune organs (bone marrow, spleen, lymph nodes, tonsils, small intestine aggregated lymph nodes, appendix, thymus, etc.), 'soldiers' immune cells (lymphocytes, mononuclear phagocytes, neutrophils, Eosinophils, mast cells, platelets, etc.), and 'weapons and ammunition' immune molecules (lysozyme, complement, immunoglobulin, interferons, interleukins, tumor necrosis factor and other cytokines). The cell has a 'cloak of invisibility' to prevent accidental injury between 'own brothers'.
Immune system with immune defense, immune self-stability and immune surveillance role.
Immune defense: to help the human body to eliminate foreign bacteria, viruses and other foreign matter, to protect the body from external damage.
Immune self-stabilization: the removal of body damage, aging or dead cells, keep the internal clean.
Immune surveillance: Identification and removal of abnormal mutant cells in the body, to prevent the occurrence of cancer and cancer.
Moderate immune response is to maintain the normal physiological functions of the human body when the immune response is too high or too low will cause harm to the human body.
Immune response is too low, the military's combat capability worse (we often say that the resistance is poor), there will be fatigue, susceptibility to cold immune deficiency disease is caused by the immune system deficiency or defects caused by the disease, divided into congenital immune deficiency and acquired For example, let's talk about discoloration of AIDS is an immunodeficiency disease, also known as Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome, caused by the HIV virus.
Immune response can be broadly divided into two categories.
In the first category, allergic reactions, such as pollen allergies, are those in which a person responds strongly to a foreign substance and recognizes some substance that is not a macromolecule or a substance that is not recognized as an antigen by the normal body as an antigen to cause an allergic reaction Allergic reaction or allergic reaction. Divided into rapid onset and delayed type.
The second category: autoimmune reactions. The immune system for a variety of reasons will be their own normal cells as antigens to be excluded and thus the incidence of rheumatoid disease most of these, such as rheumatic heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, systemic erythema Lupus and so on.
Therefore, most of the patients with rheumatism have their own "soldiers" attack themselves, and sometimes "bullets", and sometimes "weapons and ammunition exhausted," the immune disorder. Therefore, it is not recommended that patients with rheumatism blindly eating 'protein powder' and other health products' increase Immunity '.
As mentioned earlier, rheumatism refers to a wide range of diseases that affect the bones, joints and surrounding soft tissues such as muscles, bursa, tendons, fascia, and blood vessels, etc. Therefore, rheumatism also has a variety of manifestations. Just one of the most common symptoms of rheumatism, common fever, rash and the corresponding organ damage performance, such as Sjogren's syndrome symptoms may have dry mouth, dry eyes, repeated oral ulcers, rampant caries, Parotid gland enlargement, fever, fatigue, dry cough, skin rash, etc. So even without typical joint symptoms, should be alert to the possibility of rheumatism.
In fact, part of the rheumatism that the general public refers to is one of the diseases of rheumatism, 'rheumatoid arthritis', referred to as' rheumatoid' and the other part refers to the Chinese saying wind evil and dampness .Chinese medicine that rheumatism belongs to ' Arthralgia ', the main cause of the wind, wet and cold.
Rheumatism is because of living in wet conditions, work caused?
Complex and diverse rheumatism, both cross and independent. Cold and dampness is only a predisposing factor for rheumatism, its essence is the immune system dysfunction, can be caused by heredity, infection, metabolism, drugs, endocrine, etc. Cold and damp easily lead to flu, bronchitis , Rhinitis, otitis media, tonsillitis, and these diseases are easy to induce rheumatism, leading to the onset or aggravation of symptoms of rheumatism.Therefore, rheumatism patients receiving treatment should also pay attention to avoid the cold, dampness and other incentives.
Rheumatism is bad?
Indeed, the majority of rheumatic diseases are currently untreatable and often require long-term and even lifelong medication, although rheumatism can still be controlled. By the formal and systematic treatment, the vast majority of patients can control their condition and relieve symptoms , Prevent disability, improve the quality of life and save lives.If suffering from rheumatism, no treatment or treatment is not systematic, often delay the disease, leading to disability or even life-threatening.It is noteworthy that many patients have seen one after another advertisement, Spent a lot of time, looking for one after another doctor, ate one after another medicine, but the disease is still not cured.This is because the treatment of rheumatism takes a long time, the doctor needs a long-term treatment Of the plan, the treatment process needs to observe the curative effect, according to the condition changes, timely adjustment of the treatment plan.Therefore, the best rheumatism patients fixed in a hospital rheumatology specialist treatment.Some rheumatology specialist for patients with specialized follow-up medical records, there are Benefit from long-term systematic treatment.
Author: Dongfang Hospital, Beijing University of Chinese Medicine Rheumatology Chang Bing
Guidance expert: Dongyue Hospital of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine rheumatism chief physician Zhu Yue Lan
