By Dave Schafer

For more than 30 years, Karen Cambias exercised regularly, doing step aerobics to keep the heart rate up and the pounds off.

Then, in her mid-50s, her body rebelled.

Stiffness and pain crept into her left knee and left elbow. It snuck into her neck, which sent the pain down her arms and into her legs.

As it does for many people in their 50s and older, osteoarthritis had settled into some of her joints.

“I was mad at my body,” said Cambias, an administrative coordinator for Fire’s EMS division.

In 2005, more than 42 million people had arthritis, according to the Arthritis Foundation. Osteoarthritis is the most common type.

“Many years of using the joint can lead to wear and tear of the joints,” said Dr. Mario Lamothe, with Kelsey-Seybold’s main campus. When that happens, cartilage, the tissue that pads bones in a joint, becomes ragged and wears away. At its worst, all the cartilage wears away, leaving bones that rub against each other.

Stiffness, pain and swelling occur gradually.

People with a family history of the disease and those who played sports or were active in their younger days are more likely to get it. Being overweight also contributes because that increases pressure on the joints.

Cambias thinks step aerobics contributed to the degeneration of the cartilage in her left knee.

She has what Lamothe and other experts call “generalized osteoarthritis,” when the arthritis is located in more than two areas. Her pain grew so bad it woke her up at night and led to many grumpy days, she said.

Even on the best of days, she was stiff and relied on pain medication. For nearly a year she abandoned exercising.

When the pain became unbearable, a specialist switched her to stronger medications. But those made her feel like a zombie, she said.

So she decided to exercise again. This time, she’d lift weights and make her muscles stronger to relieve the stress on her joints.

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