Rheumatoid Arthritis Morning Stiffness: How Real People Deal
You need to get up and start your day, but your body won’t cooperate. Morning stiffness is considered a common characteristic of rheumatoid arthritis (RA). There is considerable joint pain and stiffness that interferes with physical function as you wake from sleep. It can affect quality of life and has been tied to work loss, too. Stiffness Symptoms and Changes in Perception The 1987 classification criteria for rheumatoid arthritis from the American College of Rheumatology listed “ morning stiffness in and around the joints, lasting at least one hour before maximal improvement” among the signs of the condition. However, when the classification criteria was updated in 2010, morning stiffness was not included. The revised criteria focused on earlier stages of rheumatoid arthritis and features that are definitively associated with RA. In fact, while morning stiffness is a common characteristic of RA, it is not specific to RA — it is a characteristic of all inflammatory types of a...