Knee Osteoarthritis Management: What Are My Options?

Thanks to increasingly painful and stiff knees, your life has become far less active than you like and you’re tired of being limited by knee osteoarthritis (OA).

You're certainly not alone in this struggle — knee OA affects more than 365 million people around the globe and this number is growing as the worldwide population ages. Closer to home, OA touches the lives of about 33 million Americans, and the knees are the most affected joints.

Given the huge number of people who are dealing with knee OA, and the fact that May is Arthritis Awareness Month, the team at Johnston Pain Management wants to focus on arthritis in this month’s blog post, with an emphasis on solutions.

Knee OA — a progressive and degenerative disease

There are more than 100 different types of arthritis and OA falls into the degenerative category, which means it typically progresses and gets worse, not better.

With knee OA, the cartilage inside these joints, which prevents friction between bones and provides cushioning, begins to break down. Unfortunately, cartilage doesn’t have the ability to regenerate or repair itself all that well, so once it breaks down, it likely won’t regrow.

Absent this protective cartilage, the friction between the bones in your knees increases, as does the presence of loose bodies (mainly bits of cartilage and bone), which leads to the pain and inflammation that’s been plaguing your knees.

Strategies for managing knee OA

As a degenerative disease without a cure, treating knee OA comes down to management and there are some key practices that can keep you on your feet and moving without pain, such as:

Relieving the pain and inflammation in your knees 

The first priority with knee OA is to relieve the pain and inflammation in these joints and there are several ways we can go about this, such as:

• Over-the-counter medications, such as ibuprofen
• Corticosteroid injections that provide longer-term relief
• Viscosupplementation to lubricate your knees with hyaluronic acid
• Peripheral nerve stimulation, which disrupts pain signaling

As well, hot and cold therapies at home are great for managing the symptoms of knee OA — hot for stiff knees and icing to keep inflammation down after being on your feet.

Lifestyle changes to support your knees

Once you find relief for your knee OA, your next steps are literal ones. Your joints are meant to move, and that’s one of the best ways to manage OA. Movement helps resources to circulate through your knees, which supports easier gliding and smoother function.

Another great practice is to strengthen the surrounding muscles to take pressure off your knees, including your quads, hamstrings, and calves.

Rounding out the key lifestyle habits is weight loss — if you’re carrying too much weight for your body, your knees bear the brunt of this. As a result, the degeneration in your knees can be accelerated, while losing weight can help slow the progression of the joint disease.

Provide more support for your knees

Another great practice is to support your knees from the outside with knee braces. Shoe inserts can also align your legs to better support your knees.

Complementary therapies

We also encourage any complementary therapies that might help with your knee OA, such as acupuncture and massage therapy.

As you can see, there are plenty of ways that you can better manage your knee OA so that you can get back out into the world with knees you can rely on.

To figure out the best knee OA management plan for your circumstances, we invite you to contact us at one of our conveniently located offices in Jacksonville, Hampstead, or New Bern, North Carolina, to schedule an appointment.