There are several diseases that are classified under rheumatic disorders. The term rheumatism is a loosely used layperson term to describe rheumatoid arthritis.

The rheumatoid disorders include those affecting muscles, joints and bones. They are common and have a huge impact on the health of a vast population worldwide.

The more severe conditions lead to inflammatory rheumatic diseases that causes joint and organ destruction. These are a leading cause of severe pain, disability and even death affecting the quality of life and leading to several comorbidities or associated ailments.
Who diagnoses and treats rheumatic diseases?

People afflicted with rheumatic diseases are diagnosed and treated by rheumatologists who are trained in this field.

Rheumatologists treat over 100 forms of rheumatic diseases and arthritis that includes major proportions of inflammatory rheumatic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, lupus and gout.
The term ‘rheumatism’

The term rheumatism was used in historical contexts when referring to any of the vast array of inflammatory joint disorders. It is no longer used in medical literature as such and the diseases that are listed under rheumatoid disorders may be enumerated under rheumatism.

Some countries use the word Rheumatism to describe fibromyalgia syndrome. Rheumatism thus has two forms:-

    articular or the one affecting joints that commonly includes rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout, spondylitis etc.
    non-articular or the ones that affect soft tissues, muscles and lead to regional pain syndromes

There was a time when the aches and pains termed rheumatism was a normal part of aging.

Most of the population as they age develop joint stiffness and pain. Many of the cases that were termed rheumatism were actually cases of osteoarthritis and not rheumatoid arthritis or any of the inflammatory disorders at all.
What disorders are classed as rheumatoid disorders?
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Rheumatoid disorders do not include osteoarthritis. Some of the disorders included are rheumatoid arthritis, lupus, gout, scleroderma, juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Sjögren’s syndrome, spondylarthritides, polymyalgia rheumatic, systemic vasculitis like giant cell arteritis etc.
Symptoms of inflammatory joint disorders

Inflammatory joint disorders involve intense joint pain, swelling, stiffness and fatigue experienced when the person is middle aged.

This severely affects working capacity and functioning involving building and sustaining careers, child-rearing and essential daily activities.
How many people does rheumatism affect?

Inflammatory rheumatic disorders affect over 7 million Americans and of these 1.3 million adults have rheumatoid arthritis.

In Europe more than 100 million people are affected by rheumatic diseases. This is almost one quarter of the whole population.

It is seen from US statistics that that between 161,000 and 322,000 adults have lupus and nearly 300,000 American children suffer from rheumatic diseases, the most common of which is juvenile idiopathic arthritis or juvenile rheumatoid arthritis (JRA).

Estimates suggest that one child in every 1,000 will develop some form of rheumatic disease and 8.4% women and 5% men during their lifetime will develop some form of rheumatic disease.

Women are 2 to 3 times more likely to suffer from rheumatoid disorders like rheumatoid arthritis and 10 times more likely to develop lupus than men. Females in Europe account for 60 percent of diagnosed cases.

Rheumatism is a medical term once frequently used to describe disorders associated with many different parts of the body. Most often, people associate the word with arthritis, or with rheumatic fever, a complication of strep throat that can result in damage to the heart. The term can be used to refer to the symptoms of numerous conditions that can cause pain and/or weakness, however.

Some conditions that were once given the general label of rheumatism or called rheumatic diseases include rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, lupus, fibromyalgia, and tendinitis. Frequently, autoimmune disorders, since they remained unnamed but caused pain as well as affecting other organs, were grouped together under this label. Illnesses like lupus were particularly susceptible to being called rheumatism. Later understanding of the actions of these illnesses show that the problem is not dysfunction of the joints, but rather immune systems that can attack joints, muscles and organs.

Some forms are called non-articular rheumatism and may affect the soft tissues causing pain throughout the body. Conditions like tendinitis and fibromyalgia fall into this category. In addition, these forms can be localized to specific areas in the body. Bursitis is form that affects and inflames the bursa, which are special sacs that protect joints and overlapping muscles. It most frequently occurs at the site of a joint that may have been injured through overuse.
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Other forms of non-articular rheumatism may also result from repetitive motion. Carpal Tunnel Syndrome is in this class and is often caused by poor position when typing, or by positional problems when assembling multiple products of the same type.

Another type is temporomandibular joint syndrome (TMJ), which only affects the joints in the jaws. Many people suffer from this condition, which can cause the mouth to get stuck when its open or closed, or cause painful popping and clicking when the jaw is moved.

The general term rheumatism is seldom heard now in medical communities because health professionals feel that specific naming of illnesses can better point toward standards or treatment and care. Treating lupus, for example, is hugely different from treating bursitis or TMJ. With more specified names comes specified research that can help determine a range of information about an illness. Overly general terms lack the specificity required to define the action of a condition, which best directs effective treatment.
Your Comprehensive Guide to Treating and Overcoming Rheumatoid Arthritis

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Rheumatoid arthritis is an autoimmune disease in which your body starts destroying itself. It can be a devastating disease that can certainly destroy your health.

Of course, the U.S. "health" care system has evolved to one that focuses on using drugs and surgery as its primary treatment tool. This works exceptionally well for some diseases -- like acute trauma -- but for other diseases, especially autoimmune diseases like rheumatoid arthritis, it is an abysmal failure.

I have personally treated over 3,000 patients with rheumatoid arthritis in my practice, which is well more than 10 times the amount a typical family physician would treat in their entire career. So I have a fair amount of experience here.

The treatment protocol I used is available for all to review. It involves the following

    A revised version of Dr. Brown's Antibiotic Protocol

Lifestyle Changes

    Improving your diet using a combination of my nutritional guidelines and nutritional typing. There are some general principles that seem to hold true for all nutritional types and these include:

    Eliminating sugar and most grains

    Having unprocessed, high-quality foods, organic and locally grown if possible

    Eating your food as close to raw as possible

    Getting plenty high-quality animal-based omega-3 fats, such as krill oil

    Incorporating regular exercise into your daily schedule.

Address Emotional Trauma

    Having an effective method to address the nearly universal underlying emotional distresses that are present in virtually all autoimmune diseases like RA.

    The emotional trauma typically occurs before the age the conscious mind is formed, which is typically around the age of 5 or 6, though it can occur at any point in your life.

    If that specific emotional insult is not addressed with an effective treatment modality, then the underlying emotional trigger will not be removed, allowing the destructive process to proceed.

    In some cases, RA appears to be caused by an infection, and it is my experience that this infection is usually acquired when you have a stressful event that causes a disruption in your bioelectrical circuits, which then causes an impairment in your immune system.

    This impairment predisposes you to developing the initial infection and also contributes to your relative inability to effectively defeat the infection.

    Therefore, it’s very important to have an effective tool to address these underlying emotional traumas. In my practice, the most common form of treatment used is called the Meridian Tapping Technique (MTT).

    If you already have RA, the emotional trauma is best treated by a professional.

Resolve Vitamin D Deficiency

    Getting your vitamin D levels checked and, if necessary, taking a supplement if you can't get daily sun exposure. In the thousands of patients I saw it was unusual where a severe vitamin D deficiency was not present.

    In my book it is virtual criminal malpractice to treat a person with RA and not aggressively monitor their vitamin D levels to confirm that they are in a therapeutic range of 55-65 ng/ml.

Other Considerations

One new addition to the protocol is low-dose Naltrexone, which I would encourage anyone with RA to try. It is inexpensive and non-toxic, and I have a number of physician reports documenting incredible efficacy in getting people off of all their dangerous arthritis meds.

Please read through the articles below to gain in-depth knowledge on all aspects of what rheumatoid arthritis is, from diagnosis to success stories and in between.