The Top Manahawkin 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 caused by osteoarthritis is a familiar condition around the world. Manahawkin Chiropractic Center encourages our Manahawkin chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We are well aware that we come across sounding like a broken record on exercise, but exercise remains ‘king’ when it comes to knee pain care! And other new knee pain research touts a few new treatment methods to try, too.
OSTEOARTHRITIS
Osteoarthritis (OA) is a disease of degenerated cartilage or wear and tear damage to cartilage resulting in disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults around the world. Knee OA and Hip OA are the leading types with knee OA being the most common. The objective of treatment of OA is management and reduction of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches include NSAIDs while non-drug approaches incorporate exercise (walking), aerobic exercise, weight loss, diet, hot/cold therapy, electrotherapy to enhance muscle strength and decrease joint pain. Surgery (arthroscopy and joint replacement therapy) was described as a last treatment option. The authors of this paper concluded 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 major 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 addressing 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 see as making the treatment worthwhile to have undergone. For patients with osteoarthritis who went through non-surgical treatments, the amount of knee flexion they could do after treatment was from 3.8 to 6.4 degrees. Other interesting information researchers found from the 72 studies they examined 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 grown in availability alongside traditional exercise for knee OA pain. A randomized control trial compared 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 post treatments, the PRP did not change pain in mild-to-mode knee OA patients weighed against exercise alone. As a matter of fact, the exercise alone group outcomes were clinically superior for function and health related quality of life. Even though the PRP increased cost to the combined treatment, it did not show itself 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 document the efficacy of such treatments as PRP.
CONTACT Manahawkin Chiropractic Center
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 effectiveness of the gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A beneficial, relieving treatment approach to incorporate with exercise!
Schedule your Manahawkin chiropractic appointment now. From what we read, it seems like exercise is still ‘king’ in dealing with osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even incorporate some distraction to help the knee.
