Rheumatoid Arthritis

Your joints are the place where movement becomes possible. They are the hinges of your freedom. They allow you to grasp, to walk, to turn, to open and close. Without them, you would be a rigid block — with them, you are a person who can move, who can turn toward life and away from it again, who comes and goes.

In rheumatoid arthritis, something turns against these very hinges. Not from the outside. From within. Your own immune system — the same system that is supposed to protect you — turns against the lining of your joints. Medical research calls this an autoimmune reaction: the body has lost the boundary between what belongs to it and what must be fought. It fights itself. Often symmetrically, on both sides, especially in the hands — where you grasp, hold, shape, touch.