Postpartum Joint Pain: Reasons & Conditions

Reasons and Conditions During Postpartum Joint Pain

Postpartum joint pains are a regular occurrence that tends to occur with many women after they give birth. The causes of this problem lie in many areas including carrying a child for a long time such that it takes its toll on the body and joints, especially the legs and the back.

Apart from this, the activities that you will have to indulge in after delivery can also cause a significant load on the joints. However, having said this, these joint pains are quite temporary and will go away as you start to lose weight, and recover from the delivery and rigors after pregnancy.

Reasons for Postpartum Joint Pain

Postpartum joint pain also has another more biochemical aspect to it as well as the aspect of one of modern medicine's most mysterious conditions. There is a hormone that is secreted in the body called relaxin. This is a hormone that is secreted in both men and women. In men, this hormone increases the motility of sperm, making them more viable for fertilization. In women, the hormone does much more and is responsible for making some structural changes to the uterine muscles and bones - specifically to the cartilage called the pubic symphysis.

Conditions During Postpartum Joint Pain

This hormone is usually secreted even when a woman is not pregnant and peaks after 14 days into ovulation, but in a pregnant woman is secreted in its highest quantity during the 14th week of pregnancy. This hormone's withdrawal will cause the joints to start to return to the normal shape that it was before pregnancy.

Unfortunately, not enough is understood about this hormone beyond the above stated facts to come up with a diagnostic cure. The hormone is also supposed to be implicated in the development of a condition called fibromyalgia. This is a condition that is characterized by muscular and joint pains, stiffness, fatigue, dysphagia, and a number of other problems that seem to have no real connection with each other.

People who do suffer from this disease seem to also have very varying symptoms and since the medical community is not completely sure about the disease, there is no absolute cure for it. Another aspect that can cause joint pains include the reduction in secretion of anti-inflammatory glucocorticoids, and the inflammation promoting hormone prolactin that is responsible for the creation of milk in the breast. The methods of dealing with joint pain are to rest adequately and use a combination of heat and cold compresses.