More Than Just Back Pain

Hello, and welcome to this week's episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. How is everyone doing? Here in Michigan where I'm located, summer's unfortunately coming to an end and we're moving into fall and for me and my Ankylosing Spondylitis, the storm systems that come through on a much more regular basis, the wet cold that's coming at the end of this month starting into the fall. That's really when my AS kind of goes off the charts and I get the most amount of pain.

So how are all you doing? How is the weather affecting everybody else I'd love to hear? If you go to spondypodcast.com, you can send a message to me and I will reach out to you I've got one that I have to respond to now from a gentleman that does a lot of really good exercise videos that you can find online and I'll bring more to you on that in an upcoming episode. But outside of that, the great thing I've got is a couple of good bits of information. The show just hit the 97th country that the show has been downloaded in, and that country was Israel. Somebody from Israel downloaded a few episodes to listen to, so that's fantastic. And if that person listens to this show, I'd love it if you would go to spondypodcast.com and shoot me a message from the Contact section. I'd love to get to know who is there, and that goes for any country. If you're out there in Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Australia, England, Ireland, Brazil, Peru, any of those countries where the show gets downloaded, please go to spondypodcast.com and not only sign up for the newsletter, but also go ahead and shoot me a message to let me know that you're listening that that would be great to hear from everybody. And I will respond to y'all.

So let's get into today's message, and I do have a special announcement at the end of the show, too, that I'll tease right now but let's get into today's episode. And I want to talk to folks about basically Beyond Back Pain, Five Warning Signs That You Might Have Ankylosing Spondylitis. What got me thinking about this was that as I was moderating an Ankylosing Spondylitis forum that I deal with on Facebook had a lot of messages coming in lately saying, I think I have as I have all the symptoms of AS, I haven't been diagnosed yet I have my first rheumatology appointment coming up all sorts of different things like that. They have been coming in really fast and furious the last month or so and so I thought I would do an episode directed towards people that are just recently diagnosed, or are in the process of getting a diagnosis or even trying to get a diagnosis and these five items that we're going to touch on. Now, how do they apply to Ankylosing Spondylitis, but they also apply to for the most part non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis. So, just remember, as you're going through the process of being diagnosed, if your doctor says to you, no, I don't think you have Ankylosing Spondylitis, I'm not seeing the fusion or the in creased amounts of inflammation in your x rays, you know, turn to the doctor and say, Alright, what about non-radiographic, I have all the pain, checkmark each box for all the pain, the symptoms, the hurt back, sore hips, whatever it might be, but you're not seeing the inflammation. So to me, that sounds like non-radiographic axial spondyloarthritis let them tell you that reason they think that it's not that because maybe it is and maybe they just didn't consider it. I hate to say it, maybe they're not 100% familiar with it. So you have to sometimes maybe help them to help you so they don't pass you off as something that it's not in you end up going down a trail that doesn't help you and just frustrates you and doesn't help do it. Is your medical situation, what we know and I like to always start off episodes as Ankylosing Spondylitis is a type of inflammatory arthritis that primarily affects your spine and hips. You know, it can affect anywhere in your body,...