Brett Loding

Arthritis – and the way it can affect your health and quality of life – can be a difficult thing to come to grips with. Arthritis isn't so much a specific disease as it is a condition that can arise as a result of over 100 different illnesses. Generally, arthritis involves degeneration or inflammation of the joints.

We are all aware of the cliches of growing older: we get shorter, our tall tales get bigger, and we get revenge on our own children by spoiling theirs! Seriously, there are a number of things we can expect as we get older and our bodies begin to change, and two of the most common changes for older folks have now been linked by doctors who are beginning to believe they have factors in common.

Everybody knows that learning doesn't end with high school or college. Once we have finished with our formal educations, we still have a big, wide world to understand and master. Most of us learn to live with our partners, and make a loving marriage work. We have to learn to be parents. We have to learn new skills, and abilities to continue to reach career goals, and find new successes in our chosen fields.

We are getting older all the time. It's nothing to get upset about it's only natural. However, that doesn't mean we don't have some say when it comes to our place in the march of time.

Our quality of life depends on many factors: social, financial, physical. The later years of our lives should be a time of recreation, relaxation, and reflection on a life lived well. As we all know, this kind of experience takes planning.