Does anyone ever suffer with joint pain? I’ve been diagnosed for about two/three months now and currently my knees feel like they’re an old, rusty gate, struggling to swing in the wind. Has anyone else suffered with achy/stiff joints and if so what do you do to ease these pains? x
hi mr lgq
i have aching joints but suspect it is osteo arthritis, mainly because my mum started with this at about my age.
ibuprofen is good for this.
carole x
Hi,
MS doesn’t directly attack joints, but it could be that if your muscles aren’t working properly, or your gait and posture are affected, it’s putting extra strain on the joints.
Physiotherapy or gentle exercises such as yoga or pilates might help. Otherwise, if it’s definitely musculo-skeletal pain, and not nerve pain, it’s usually conventional painkillers such as cocodamol and/or ibuprofen.
If I’m honest, I don’t think you’ll get a complete fix, but the care is similar to if you had joint pain on its own, independent of MS.
If very stiff muscles are contributing to the problem, then treating that with a muscle relaxant such as Baclofen might help, even though it’s not actually treating the joint.
Tina
I didn’t think it would be linked with the MS diagnosis but I thought I’d just enquire to see. My dad suffers with spondylosis so it could be linked with or that (but I don’t know really) I was in hospital a month or so ago and after a 5 day course of steroids I felt marvellous! I’ll be going back in for a course of alemtuzumab so I suppose I can enquire then about everything.
Kris x
If it’s some form of inflammatory joint pain, rather than “wear-and-tear” (osteoarthritis), steroids probably would have calmed that down, too. So it might not be coincidence it was better on steroids, and still might or might not be anything to do with MS.
Tina
Hi
Yes, I do and today is a bad day.
I take regular paracetamol and codeine. I was on Methotrexate, DMD for rheumatology patients but decided I wanted to stop.
I’m supposed to take a drug called Arcoxia once a day but I don’t. Only take it on really bad days.
X
My dad has enough Co-codamol and Naproxen to sink a battleship, I might try the co-codamol for a week and see what that does, if anything.
If it persists, go and see you gp. An x-ray in the first instance would show signs of arthritis.
I’m sure you’re also aware of codeine and constipation?
Good luck
X
Cocodamol is kinder on the stomach, but the limitation is it’s just a painkiller - it has little if any anti-inflammatory effect.
If there is an inflammatory element going on as well (I don’t mean CNS inflammation as in MS, but actual inflammation of the joint), ibuprofen or even aspirin may serve you better, but you have to be careful of stomach problems (not a worry if you’re only going to try them for a few days, as an experiment).
Tina
Thanks for all the feedback, you’re all superstars. I’ll give ibuprofen a go as I know they’re normally the main ones used for anti inflammatory.