What causes arthritis?
Arthritis is not one condition. It is dozens of ways that joints degenerate, stiffen, and hurt. Some come from wear and tear over decades. Others come from inflammation, injury, or the body attacking its own tissues. Understanding which type you have is the first step to managing it well, and movement is almost always the answer.
The cartilage that cushions your joints gradually wears down over years. This is the most common type of arthritis. It is not a death sentence. Joints stay healthy when they are used well. The right strengthening and mobility work keeps the surrounding muscles strong enough to protect the worn cartilage and reduce stress on what is left.
Conditions like rheumatoid arthritis involve inflammation that comes from the body's immune system attacking joint tissue. This requires medical management, but physical therapy is equally important. Movement reduces stiffness, strengthening protects the joint, and well-designed exercise programs can help manage inflammation naturally. Your rheumatologist manages the disease itself. We manage what it is doing to your joints and to your capacity to use them, which means holding on to range of motion, protecting the joints that flare most often, and pacing activity so that one hard day does not cost you a week.
A fracture, sprain, or ligament tear that was not fully rehabilitated leaves the joint weaker and less stable. That unresolved injury sets the stage for arthritis years later. Proper rehab after injury is how you prevent arthritis before it starts. If you already have it, we rebuild what was broken the first time. An old ankle sprain, a knee that was never quite the same after a season, a shoulder that healed but stayed stiff: these are the joints that tend to hurt first decades later.
When you stop moving a joint because it hurts, you all but ensure it will get worse. Disuse causes muscles to weaken, cartilage to stiffen, and pain to spread. Movement is the antidote. Gentle, progressive loading is what tells your joints to stay healthy and flexible, even if they have arthritis. We start below the level that provokes a flare and build up from there, which is why the plan gets written around your joints rather than pulled off a shelf.
If you move with poor mechanics or have muscle imbalances, some joints carry more load than they should. Over time that uneven stress triggers arthritis. Fixing how you move is often the most powerful intervention. Better mechanics mean better-distributed force and less wear on the arthritic joint. We watch how you walk, squat, climb stairs and get out of a chair, then change the pattern that has been quietly overloading one side.
