If you wake in the mornings with pain and difficulty moving your joints especially if these are the small joints of your hands and feet and the symptoms are persisting for weeks, meaning it was not a matter of 1 or 2 days, then we might consider, as one of the important possibilities here, a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis for example.

We did not say it has to be rheumatoid arthritis in particular.. We suspected it could be the diagnosis here..
 
What do I do then?
You consult a rheumatologist
He will listen to your complaints in detail, will ask you many questions and he will examine you and he will diagnose the cause of your symptoms whether it turns out to be rheumatoid arthritis in particular or another rheumatic disease.
 
Now I told you what you should do if you suspect that you have rheumatoid arthritis... I want to tell you now what you should not do if you suspect that you have rheumatoid arthritis.. Don't go to the lab and request labs for yourself on your own and don't ask the lab technicians for help on that issue... We see patients coming to us with a weird list of lab tests that they believe are what they refer to as rheumatism lab tests.. A list of totally irrelevant tests that we don't need.. Just a waste of time and money for no good reason..
A better idea is to be scientific and you consult the specialist .. He will order what is needed only in your case and you will have a correct diagnosis and a treatment plan on that basis
 
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Social media hashtag:
#hatem_eleishi
#rheumatoid
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This post was prepared and published by  Dr. Hatem Eleishi. Dr. Hatem Eleishi is a professor of rheumatology at Cairo university (Egypt) and is especially dedicated to supporting arthritis patients with online educational videos and articles about arthritis causes and treatment. He also runs a rheumatology clinic in Cairo and a center for online medical consultations that, in addition to providing online rheumatology consultations, also provides online medical consultations in several different medical specialties by expert consultants from Egypt, Canada and the United States.
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