If your joints feel stiff and swollen in the morning, you may have rheumatoid arthritis. You need to know the symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis first. First, when you wake up in the morning with rheumatoid arthritis, you may experience stiffness in your finger joints or joints in your body, which is called “morning stiffness”. Morning stiffness is often mistakenly thought to be caused by cold, dampness, improper sleeping posture and other reasons. Superstitious people believe that it is a “ghostly possession”, which is wrong. In fact, morning stiffness is not related to these, it is usually a sign of disease and can be used as a basis for the diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis. However, morning stiffness is not necessarily a disease. Mild morning stiffness in the elderly is a normal phenomenon, usually lasting no more than 15 minutes, and the degree of joint stiffness is mild and easily relieved. Clinical observation shows that the majority of rheumatoid patients start with joint swelling. The more pronounced the swelling of the joint, the more painful it is, and even severe pain. In the early stages of rheumatoid arthritis, joint swelling is more pronounced and the lesions are mainly in the proximal interphalangeal joints, which are known as spindle-shaped swelling. The swelling is due to the accumulation of inflammatory cells in the joint, and they can cause pain and swelling of the diseased tissue. As you can see, spindle swelling of the finger joints is a hallmark symptom of early rheumatoid arthritis. Therefore, if you feel stiff and swollen joints in the morning, you may have rheumatoid arthritis and should consider visiting a rheumatologist.