If you think junk food goes directly to your hips, you're right. But it gets worse. It gets into your hips, and into other bones in the body, too. Junk food, or more precisely, food that is high in fat and sugar, robs the skeleton of the building blocks it needs to grow and remain strong to ward off degenerative conditions like osteoporosis. The picture is not pretty.

My struggle with arthritis began when I stopped walking at two years old. At that age, I should have been running around and exploring the world, so the abrupt change in my behavior was a frightening shock for my family. It wasn't until we spent a night in the emergency room that we learned what was happening -- I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis. Now I work to spread the message of The Arthritis Society.

TORONTO - Arthritis has been called the invisible disease, but there's nothing imperceptible about its painful impact on patients' lives or the econom...