The Top Sitka Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise
Knee pain…the chance that you experience or will experience knee pain or know someone suffering with knee pain is high. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka encourages our Sitka chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We are well aware that we sound like a broken record on exercise, but exercise remains ‘king’ when it comes to knee pain care! And other new knee pain studies tout a few new treatment approaches to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear harm to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults globally. Knee OA and Hip OA are two of the most common types with knee OA being the most common. The objective of treatment of OA is management and decrease of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches include NSAIDs while non-drug approaches include exercise (walking), aerobic exercise, weight loss, diet, hot/cold therapy, electrotherapy to enhance muscle strength and reduce joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was explained to be a last treatment option. The authors of this paper highlighted that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and necessary. (1) Those are wished for goals.
DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA
How do you determine if an intervention is successful to your pain? Your desired outcome rules. For osteoarthritis, one of the main diseases that disables us humans, walking for pleasure was documented by data collected for the Genome Wide Association Study (GWAS) to be statistically significant for managing knee osteoarthritis at the genetic level. (2) Today’s researchers are also establishing a definition of just what “minimal clinically important change” is, what the minimum improvement a patient like you would perceive or say made going through the treatment was of value. For patients with osteoarthritis who went through non-surgical treatments, the amount of knee flexion they could perform after treatment was from 3.8 to 6.4 degrees. Other pertinent information researchers uncovered from the 72 studies they analyzed was that a rise in flexion was linked to lessened pain and improved function. (3) These are positive outcomes!
…AND WHAT ABOUT PLASMA-RICH PLATELET THERAPY?
In the non-surgical realm of treatment for knee osteoarthritis, platelet rich plasma (PRP) injection has become more available alongside traditional exercise for knee OA pain. A randomized control trial contrasted three treatment combos PRP injection alone (three weekly injections), exercise alone (6 weeks program/12 sessions of strengthening and functional exercise), and PRP with exercise. At 24 weeks after treatments, the PRP did not impact pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients weighed against exercise alone. Actually, the exercise alone group outcomes were clinically superior for function and health related quality of life. Even though the PRP added cost to the combined treatment, it did not prove to be better than exercise alone either. The researchers ended their paper with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to reduce pain and enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to reveal the impact of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Arctic Chiropractic, Sitka
Listen to this PODCAST on Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he shares the effective gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A beneficial, relieving treatment approach to include along with exercise!
Schedule your Sitka chiropractic appointment soon. From what we read, it looks like exercise is still ‘king’ when managing osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even incorporate some distraction to help the knee.
