There's many posts by others and medical information if you type the things you're looking for in the blue box top of the page. Osteophytes are bone spurs. There's many other articles here on SH. I have some ostephytes in my neck and in my lumber spine with Degenerative disc Disease.
Are you seeing a Rheumatologist yet? Take care and this is a great place for support. Charry

I was told by a good neurologist (I say good cause he explained more than most I've seen)...that the bone spurs can be a huge problem. Some of them are quite sharp and can press into nerves and soft tissue or your spinal cord and irritate the heck of out everything. Even the more smooth ones that just compress are bad too though. Anything that is not supposed to be there causes stress on the other parts. Osteo is the degenerative type of arthritis. For me, I ache everywhere or just in certain places, seems more in the evenings and at night. I take Celebrex twice a day to try and keep down the inflammation, but I still have so many issues and worn down bones, discs, and knees.

Check out the arthritis forum for more info. The internet google or yahoo or any of the good search engines will help you learn tons of info on osteo-arthritis and bone spurs.

I would also mention that my surgeon has told me that the osteophytes are supposed to stop growing once you've had fusion at least at that level. Maybe your fusion isn't solid? Or you have spurring at other levels that is pressing into nerves to your arms? I feel mine when I crunch my shoulders up still..I get a sharp pinching or tingle. The surgeon wasn't able to take off all of my during my two fusions due to the size and where they were located against the cord in my neck.

I had a CT scan and myelogram that diagnosed my arm problems. Have you had any tests for your nerves?

Good luck and ole arthur isn't any fun at all. I wish I'd never met him myself.

until just now. Sorry. I always go to the Recent Posts link and don't go into the individual forums unless I'm catching up.

I was telling you to check out this forum and you are already here reading everything I'm sure. Just wanted to admit I was a dummy. I've been waking at 2am every morning and blame it on that.

well, i thank you for helping me, i have been researching and im on now an anti inflamatory and waiting 3 months for a rhemy, still don't know how i control inflamation....I know i have very little impact here , but keep reading and wanting support

As someone mentioned, there is a wealth of information available from the sections at the top. Here you will get proper medical information.
As I understand it, inflammation is the body's response to injury, swelling the area to protect the problem bits.
But there gets to be a point where the inflammation itself becomes the problem.
Anti-inflammatories like Mobic can help, as can dietary changes to remove known problem foods.
You are probably on the right track to suggest that it is the inflammation causing your pain, not the spurs and such.
I don't think that arthritis itself is painful.
I have found that even with Mobic daily I still need constant pain medication to handle the ever present neck ache, and the other pains that come and go in the shoulders, arms, knees, hips and lower back.
Still trying to find the right dosage.

I have psoriatic arthritis, this causes inflammation of the joints, ligament, even my eyes get inflamed; uveitis. And all of that inflammation over time causes damage to joints. Because I never really treated my condition the inflammaton over the years has now damaged my back, knees and ankles and feet. I am now on Enbrel and Methotrexate to treat the inflammation and hopefully to slow down the damage. Although my back is so messed up. It won't help with my back but so far it has helped with my feet. I can finally walk without my feet hurting.
I'm sure that with any arthritis the inflammation needs to be controlled. I hope you find the right medication to help with that.
There is a blood test your doctor can do to see how much inflammation you have. It's called sedimentation rate. High inflammation causes a lot of pain. I know mine does. In fact before my doctor refills my pain prescriptions she runs this test first.

I have had a terrible flare-up with my low back pain, so I went in to have a chat with my pharmacist about the possibility of a short course of low dose prednisone. MY concern was that the prednisone was going to cause me a lot of problems if it had to become something I took regularly, but my pharmacist said the BIGGER problem is that the inflammation, if left untreated, will cause more degeneration and symptoms will worsen.

I've been dealing with this for over 20 years, and nobody had ever explained it to me quite like that, but now TNF blockers make sense to me. They are arthritis drugs (such as Enbrel) that will not allow the inflammation to "accumulate".

I've been on high doses of anti-inflammatories and methotrexate for a couple of years now, but neither drug is as effective as it once was, so Enbrel....here I come.

Hope you're making some headway and getting some relief.

Tracy