May is Arthritis Awareness Month in the United States so it’s an excellent time to discuss one of the most common drivers of knee pain — osteoarthritis (OA).
There are more than 100 different types of arthritis, but OA is by far the most common. Of the 58.5 million Americans with arthritis, about 33 million have OA. And OA tends to target the knees more than any other joint, which makes sense given how hard your knees work to carry you through life.
If you’re hobbled by achy and stiff knees due to OA, our team of arthritis experts at Pain Medicine Consultants wants to review a few management strategies that can help you move freely again.
There’s one universal truth with all the types of arthritis — there’s no cure. Absent a magic bullet, we’ve found great success in management strategies that not only relieve the pain, but slow the progression of the disease.
OA is what we refer to as a wear-and-tear condition, which explains why your risks for OA increase in lockstep with your age. The more you use your knees, the more the damage piles up.
This damage is defined by the loss of protective cartilage in your knees, which covers the ends of the bones to prevent friction.
With OA, the cartilage breaks down, allowing your bones to come into direct contact, thereby creating friction that leads to pain and inflammation. As OA progresses, bits of bone can break off and join the fragments of cartilage in your joint, which makes your symptoms worse still.
This damage in your knees is largely irreversible since cartilage doesn't regenerate easily. That’s why we turn to management practices.
Now that you better understand the challenges of knee OA, let’s talk about solutions, which include:
To tackle the pain and inflammation in your knees, a good first step is the use of corticosteroid injections. These injections contain a local anesthetic for pain and steroids to reduce inflammation.
If your knees have lost lubrication, we can try hyaluronic acid (HA) injections. HA is a natural substance found in your body. It retains water, and when we inject it into your knees, it can help restore smooth gliding within the joint.
Another management tool for knee OA is platelet-rich plasma (PRP) therapy. PRP injections use a concentrate of your own platelets to call on regenerative resources in your body. These injections also contain proteins that help regulate the inflammatory environment in your knees.
There’s also a lot that you can do on your end to slow the progression of knee OA and to tackle pain and inflammation, including:
When it comes to activity modification, you might try to find activities that are gentler on your knees, such as cycling or swimming.
A great way to approach this is to come in and see us so we can determine the extent of your knee OA and get you started on interventions that tackle the symptoms. From there, you can start moving again and take steps on your own to better manage the wear-and-tear in your knees, as we described above.
To set up your initial knee OA assessment and treatment plan, please contact one of our offices in Pleasant Hill, Corte Madera, or Pleasanton, California, to schedule an appointment.
