What causes joint pain?

Joint pain is caused by inflammation or damage to the structures of a joint. The structures of a joint can be ligaments, cartilage, joint capsule, tendons or bone. 

For example, if you twist your knee while playing soccer, there is a high likelihood that you will sprain (tear) the ligaments of the knee joint itself. A tear of the ligament of a joint will cause pain, swelling and often bruising in the joint. The joint may feel unstable or difficult to use because of pain.

Another cause of joint pain includes infection, which is potentially life threatening, and definitely joint threatening. This would manifest itself with a rapid onset of pain, redness and swelling, typically associated with fever and chills. This is an emergency.

Arthritis of a joint will cause pain. The most common form of arthritis is osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is a progressive degenerative disease that typically comes on with advancing age. This would be likely in older adults with the gradual onset of pain, morning stiffness and periodic flare-ups of pain and swelling.

There are a number of autoimmune diseases that cause joint pain as well. These typically involve multiple joints at the same time and often are associated with systemic problems like skin changes or rashes.

Joint pain is a frequent occurrence in overweight patients.  Being overweight causes an uneven distribution of stress on your skeleton that can lead to bone pain, especially in the joints.  As one might expect, the heavier you are the more severe the joint pain may be.  Weight loss is the most important definitive treatment for joint pain but the weight loss must occur prior to the onset of degenerative, weight-related joint disease, which can be irreversible. 

In patients who are morbidly obese, meaning they are 100 lbs or more above their ideal body weight, weight loss surgery is a safe option for controlled weight loss to alleviate joint pain.  Two of the more commonly performed operations – laparoscopic sleeve gastrectomy and laparoscopic gastric bypass – lead to an excess weight loss of 60 to 70% (i.e. if you are 100 lbs overweight, a patient can expect to lose 60 to 70 lbs after surgery).  In addition, the safety profile of these operations is much greater than that of a standard hip replacement operation.  The mortality of these operations has been reduced to 0.1%, an amazing feat!