9 Complications of Ankylosing Spondylitis

Hello and welcome to this episode of The Ankylosing Spondylitis Podcast. I decided in this episode I was going to kind of revisit some of the areas that we had already touched upon and some issues I’ve been having with my right eye brought this upon.

I started looking around I said, you know, I've kind of touched about all this, but I'm going to tie them into this package of nine possible complications that we can come into from having Ankylosing Spondylitis. The actual nine possible complications came from an article in Medical News Today that I'll have linked below. But a lot of these are all things that those of us that have Ankylosing Spondylitis need to be aware of, we need to watch out for this.

If anybody's listening for the first time, Ankylosing Spondylitis is a chronic autoimmune disorder. Anyone that's diagnosed with AS needs to be aware of these complications, that it can present to our health, both physical health and mental health.

There are a lot of things that we need to be aware of. So first, this week's Question of the Week, saw a post yesterday that kind of touched me it was one where the person said that they were really kind of feeling ignored by everybody withdrawn. No real social life, at times, maybe despondent, maybe it's a little touch, but I'm going to use that word despondent, many people and what some fantastic to see jumped right on and told this person, hey, you're walking around here, and I understand how you're feeling. But you know, chin up, all of that is great to support the person. I love seeing it. But this person's emotions were not wrong. As I touched on in the last one, they have to own their whole scope of emotions, and then deal with it in the best way that they can. So I hope this person gets any type of therapeutic help that they need, build a support network, even if it's support that you don't physically see the people but you talk to them online. All of that is Good because we know that this disease can really affect you socially. And overall it can just be a real, a real isolating type of item and we'll talk a little bit more than nine items. So anyway, I saw that I was really happy to see everybody jump right in and discuss with this person. So kudos to everybody that is listening that takes place at the forums participates and offers a friendly shoulder to cry on so to speak when it's needed. I really enjoy that about this community. We're going to look at the complications as we've said, Ankylosing Spondylitis you know as a type of arthritis, and if based upon triggering painful inflammation in the body, whether it be in the hips, the knees, the feet, the elbows, the, you know, ribs, whatever. As the condition progresses, if the inflammation remains unchecked, other complications can arise in our life. It's very important to get the inflammation controlled that can be done by diet that can be done by medication. or some combination of all of the above. If you're having questions, not sure where to start, talk to your doctor. These items I'm going to go across just so I can get this out there. I am not a doctor. This is not specific medical advice related to you. It's for informational purposes only. If one of these sounds like it's something that you are having a struggle with dealing with, or concerned about, consult your doctor talk to him or her so that they can help you work through the stages of what needs to be done to alleviate this problem or head off this problem.

Number one, eye problems we all know about uveitis. I write on the type of conjunctivitis that you might get through having Ankylosing Spondylitis. As I've said in previous episodes, you really want to have now this really applies more to the United States because I'm not sure how doctors work in other countries), but if you have Ankylosing Spondylitis in the United States, you really want to have an...