Degenerative Joint Disease – Symptoms

Transcript

Degenerative disc disease known as DJD will create extra buildup around your nerves or spinal cord. And the symptoms will come from pressure on these nerves or spinal cord as a result. The pressure on the nerves of the spine leads to a condition called a radiculopathy or sciatica, or how some people, this is where you have pain into your arm or forearm or hand radiating from the neck, or lower back pain that radiates in a sciatic fashion down to the thigh, calves or foot. A second type of a DJD symptom is called claudication. Claudication is pain on walking. This is more common in people over the age of 50. And people notice as they walk longer distances, they start having pain into the back of their thighs and this pain resolves upon sitting. The third type of symptoms from DJD is myelopathy. Myelopathy is a fancy word for spinal cord injury. Spinal cord injury can take the form of numbness in the hands, numbness in the feet, increasing on steadiness, poor coordination of the hands or legs and spastic movements of the arms or the legs, or movements seem stiffer and more uncontrolled. Most DJD symptoms do not need immediate medical treatment, but if you develop bowel or bladder incontinence weakness, then your DJD symptoms can require immediate treatment. Then you have to go to the emergency room.