Over the past month, I have noticed that my right ankle is very stiff in the morning when I first get up and when I get up to move around after sitting for awhile (e.g., at my desk at work.) It’s not painful and the stiffness goes away after I move around a bit. I was mostly ignoring it until my husband said that maybe I am starting to have arthritis. My father has psoriatic arthritis and my understanding is that having a family history of it is one of the risk factors. My question is at what point does it make sense to see a doctor about something like this? I’m happy to just ignore it since the stiffness goes away quickly but is it at all useful to see a doctor early to see if arthritis is even the problem when a little bit of stiffness is all I’m dealing with? In other words, I don’t want to ignore it if it there is evidence of better outcomes when arthritis is diagnosed early.
I’m 42 and fairly active, btw (lift 4x/week, 30 min walks a few times a week) though I do work a job which has me sitting for 40ish hours per week.
Thanks for the post and hope you’re doing well. It’s hard to confidently give specific recommendations for when someone should see a doctor over the internet. That said, the subjective assessment of stiffness doesn’t necessarily bother me unless it’s associated with significant pain or dysfunction. You’re correct that psoriatic arthritis has a genetic component and in general, most things do better when identified early provided there are effective treatments available.
In any event, if this issue is bothering you I think it’s reasonable to see a doctor about it, as despite my minimal concern about “stiffness” as a standalone symptom, I can’t really provide lots of reassurance from here.
At this point I think I will hold off on a doctor’s visit and will instead try to simply move/flex it a bit more during the day. Can’t really do anything about the stiffness overnight but maybe there will be some carryover benefit from added daytime movement. At a minimum, I wouldn’t think it would make it worse.