Is rheumatism (arthritis) seasonal?
Not really.
There are aches and pain in and around joints or in muscles that are related to unaccustomed activity. Take these cases:
- 56 year old female, hospital worker (mostly seated in the lab), complains of heel pain about 3rd week of December. Her heel is tender to pressure, in the sole more so.
- 65 year old lady has swelling of theleft knee in the first week of December, and remembered the same condition some years back during the holy week.
Common to the 2 cases are gender and age group and one other fact, which many times, could be missed during the doctor visit - both had spent an average of 5 hours doing Christmas shopping, and for the second case, walking in a religious procession for at least 3 hours.
Does this feel familiar? Here are some tips to avoid this bane:
1. Check out those shoes. Get into a comfortable soft soled footwear, with enough arch support (or buy one during the shopping)
2. Have regular rest periods during the outing - clue is don't wait for discomfort in the calf muscles before finding a seat, so this should be about every 30 min for some, 45 min or even 1-2 hours for the younger ones.
3. Cold packs around the ankle area can help after a long shopping walk - just for 10 minutes, while putting up feet to rest.
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