The Top Nashua Knee Osteoarthritis Treatment: Exercise

Knee pain…the likelihood that you have or will have knee pain or know someone who suffers with knee pain is high. Knee pain due to osteoarthritis is a shared condition around the world. Moriarty Chiropractic encourages our Nashua chiropractic knee pain patients to exercise. We know we sound like a broken record when it comes to exercise, but exercise is still ‘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 harm to cartilage giving rise to disability and other health problems impacting over 500 million adults globally. Knee OA and Hip OA are the leading types with knee OA being the most common. The goal of treatment of OA is management and reduction of symptoms, not cure. Drug approaches consist of NSAIDs while non-drug approaches include 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 highlighted that precautions to keep joints healthy and disease-free were advisable and necessary. (1) Those are desirous goals.

DESIRED RESULTS OF TREATMENT FOR KNEE OA

How do you determine if an intervention is successful to your pain? Your hoped for outcome is the most important. For osteoarthritis, one of the bigger 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 worthwhile. 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 pertinent information researchers found from the 72 studies they examined was that an increase in flexion was linked to lessened pain and improved function. (3) These are positive findings!

…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 combinations 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 didn’t 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 increased cost to the combined treatment, it did not show itself to be superior to exercise alone either. The researchers ended their paper with the statement that exercise alone was recommended to decrease pain and enhance function. (4) Certainly, more studies will continue to document the impact of such treatments as PRP.

CONTACT Moriarty Chiropractic

Listen to this PODCAST on Osteoarthritis of the Knee with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he describes the effective gentle, adapted protocols of The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management in treating the osteoarthritic knee! A helpful, relieving treatment approach to include along with exercise!

Schedule your Nashua chiropractic appointment now. From what we read, it seems like exercise is still ‘king’ when managing osteoarthritis of the knee. We can help you find the right exercises and even integrate some distraction to help the knee.