Morning Stiffness: Normal Aging or Something More?

We’ve all had those mornings. The moment you roll out of bed and your feet touch the floor, something feels stiff and sore. You hobble to the bathroom and start your morning routine, and slowly the stiffness improves. This isn’t usual for you, so you don’t think much of it. But then it starts to happen more frequently, until every day you wake up stiff and sore. Now you start to worry, is there something more serious going on?

You go to your family doctor and explain what is happening. You happen to notice some swelling around your knees and your hands as well. Nothing major, but a little puffiness. Your family doctor sends you for imaging and blood work. Everything comes back “normal” and it’s not arthritis like you were worried about.

You book in with physiotherapy for assessment, and explain all your symptoms and they ask about your life: work, hobbies, stresses. With this line of questioning, you realize in the past year you have not been exercising, managing your stress, and working longer hours than you’d like to admit. It’s an eye-opener how little you have been prioritizing your health. The physiotherapist explains how the deconditioning from lack of exercise, repetitive strain from prolonged standing at work, and wound up nervous system from stress, have all contributed to this state of stiffness in the morning. They provide suggestions on improving your work station, exercises to start improving your mobility to improve your success exercising again, and lead you to realize it's time to manage your stresses more effectively. After 4 weeks of implementing the physiotherapist's treatment plan, you wake up in the morning and realize “hey, I’m not hobbling to the bathroom!”.

Moral of the story, our lifestyle such as work, exercise, and stress will impact morning stiffness. Conditions such as osteoarthritis will cause morning stiffness in the affected areas, and will improve within 30 minutes of waking. Inflammatory types of arthritis such as rheumatoid arthritis, will cause morning stiffness that takes 60 minutes from waking to improve. Regardless of which exists, it’s always important to realize the impact of our lifestyle in exacerbating symptoms of other conditions too.