How do you know if you have arthritis in your knee?

Any irritation or tenderness, otherwise known as inflammation, in any of the joints results in arthritis. If a person suffers from pain, swelling or stiffness in any joints then he is supposed to have arthritis. And people as they age up, are commonly affected by arthritis in the knee. There are three most common types of knee arthritis namely, osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, and Post-traumatic arthritis.

Following are the symptoms of arthritis in the knee:

• Sudden pain developed in the knee which gradually or slowly gets intensified.
• Early morning pain, after being inactive or idle for a long time.
• The pain felt in knees as we climb stairs or standing up after sitting for along time.
• Even when you walk for a few meters, if you feel pain in your knee, it is due to arthritis.
• You will feel pain when sitting down on the floor, folding your legs.
• Change in the weather, especially winter season can bring pain in knees when you have arthritis.
• If you wake up from sleep due to sudden gunshot pain in the knee, it will be due to osteoarthritis.
• Swelling and pain will be more prominent after a long period of inactivity, due to the formation of bone spurs or extra fluids in the knee.
• A feeling of warmth and observance of redness in the skin is another symptom for knee arthritis.
• A feeling of grinding sensation during movement with some cracking and popping sounds from the knee. This is due to the loss of smooth cartilage in the knee bone which helps in the rhythmic motion of the knee joint.
• Due to difficulty in movement of knee joints due to arthritis, it will be complicated even to make simple movements with the knee.
• The sense of pain when some weight is kept on the knee may be due to arthritis.
• A sense of feeling that the joint is giving out resulting in chronic pain can also be due to arthritis.
• Deformity of the joint is another symptom of arthritis.