The Truth Revealed About Exercise As Part Of Arthritis Treatment Plan

Contrary to popular opinion, if you have osteoarthritis exercise is absolutely fundamental to your well-being. Unfortunately, many people with joint pain reject exercise – perhaps because it’s a bit, shall we say, “easier” to stay inactive. May I encourage you to reconsider your position on exercise as it relates to arthritis? I hope so. Please find the following information, an incentive to living your best life with arthritis.

The truth about exercise playing a role in your arthritis treatment plan.

Does exercise contribute to arthritis? Research says no
If you’re putting off getting into a regular exercise routine because you’re worried that exercise contributes to arthritis, think again. Studies show that exercise can be safe for joints, both in older, overweight folks and in athletes.

Arthritis Treatment Study: The Knees of Framingham

In 1948, more than 5,200 residents of Framingham, Mass., volunteered for the Framingham Heart Study, which has produced major insights into the causes of heart attack and stroke. In 1971, scientists began a new study of the children of the original volunteers and the spouses of those children. Between 1993 and 1994, 1,279 members of the Framingham Offspring Cohort enrolled in a study of exercise and arthritis. Their average age was 53.

All the volunteers were free of arthritis when the study began. Each answered detailed questions about their patterns of exercise, including walking, jogging, being active enough to work up a sweat, and their overall exercise level. All the people provided information about knee injuries and symptoms of knee pain and stiffness. In addition, all the volunteers were weighed and measured, and they each had a full series of knee x-rays.

Between 2002 and 2005, the subjects answered the same questions about knee pain and injury, and the x-rays were repeated. All the x-rays were independently evaluated by two experts who had no knowledge of the subjects’ exercise histories.

When the results were tallied, the researchers found no link between exercise and arthritis of the knee. The most active people had the same risk of arthritis as the least active, in terms of both symptoms and x-ray abnormalities.

Arthritis Treatment Study: The Australian Knees
Although the Framingham study goes a long way toward dispelling the idea that exercise causes arthritis, it did not confirm a fond hope of exercise enthusiasts: that repetitive exercise could be good for joints.

However, a high-tech Australian investigation of 297 men and woman without knee injuries or disease showed that people who performed the most vigorous weight-bearing exercise had the thickest, healthiest knee cartilage.

Arthritis Treatment Study: Runners’ Knees
A 2008 study that compared 284 dedicated runners with 156 nonrunners also found little evidence that exercise causes arthritis. After a remarkably long 21-year follow-up period, the runners experienced significantly less musculoskeletal disability than did their less active peers — and the runners also enjoyed a 39% lower mortality rate.

The research is impressive, and it confirms earlier studies. Former varsity runners, for example, are no more likely to develop arthritis in their legs than former college swimmers, and champion runners are no more likely to end up with arthritic hips than non athletes.

Exercise was as friendly to the knees of joggers as walkers, even though jogging subjects the lower body to much higher impact and stress than walking. And even though obesity is an independent risk factor for arthritis, physically active overweight members of the study group fared just as well as their slim peers.

How Exercise Can Help with Arthritis Treatment

Ignoring the pain of arthritis won’t make it go away. Nor will avoiding all motions that spark discomfort. In fact, limiting your movements can weaken muscles, compounding joint trouble, and affect your posture, setting off a cascade of further problems. And while pain relievers and cold or hot packs may offer quick relief, fixes like these are merely temporary.

By contrast, the right set of exercises can be a long-lasting way to tame ankle, knee, hip, or shoulder pain. Practiced regularly, joint pain relief workouts might permit you to postpone—or even avoid—surgery on a problem joint that has been worsening for years by strengthening key supportive muscles and restoring flexibility. Over time, you may find limitations you’ve learned to work around will begin to ease. Tasks and opportunities for fun that have been weeded out of your repertoire by necessity may come back into reach, too.

Beyond the benefits to your joints, becoming more active can help you stay independent long into your later years. Regular activity is good for your heart and sharpens the mind. It nudges blood pressure down and morale up, eases stress, and shaves off unwanted pounds. Perhaps most importantly, it lessens your risk of dying prematurely. All of this can be achieved at a comfortable pace and very low cost in money or time.

How Does Exercise Benefit Osteoarthritis?
Most people have little appreciation for how powerful exercise can be in preserving bone density and joint function, which can help prevent and alleviate osteoarthritis as you age. The notion that exercise is detrimental to your joints is a misconception; there is no evidence to support this belief. It’s simply a myth that you can ‘wear down’ your knees just from average levels of exercise and/or normal activity.

Instead, the evidence points to exercise having a positive impact on joint tissues — if you exercise sufficiently to lose weight, or maintain an ideal weight, you can in fact reduce your risk of developing osteoarthritis.

Arthritis Treatment: Why weight matters

Being overweight raises your risk for developing osteoarthritis in a weight-bearing joint like the knee — and even in the hand, according to some research, since inflammatory factors related to weight might exacerbate this condition. Simply walking across level ground puts up to one-and-a-half times your body weight on your knees. That means a 200-pound man will deliver 300 pounds of pressure to his knee with each step. Off level ground, the news is worse: each knee bears two to three times your body weight when you go up and down stairs, and four to five times your body weight when you squat to tie a shoelace or pick up an item you dropped.

Fortunately, strengthening your quadriceps (the muscles on the fronts of the thighs) changes the equation, and so does losing weight. Each pound you lose reduces knee pressure in every step you take. One study found that the risk of developing osteoarthritis dropped 50% with each 11-pound weight loss among younger obese women. If older men lost enough weight to shift from an obese classification to just overweight — that is, from a body mass index (BMI) of 30 or higher down to one that fell between 25 and 29.9 — the researchers estimated knee osteoarthritis would decrease by a fifth. For older women, that shift would cut knee osteoarthritis by a third.

Arthritis rates are more than twice as high in obese people as those who are normal weight, because the extra weight puts more pressure on your joints. This can not only lead to osteoarthritis, it can also make the condition exponentially worse. You will want to jumpstart your weight loss by eating a healthier diet based on the principles of my nutrition plan, and then continue with appropriate exercise.

Whether you need to lose weight or not, however, exercise can help by reducing your joint pain and making it easier for you to perform daily tasks. This is important, as the pain of osteoarthritis has a tendency to lead to decreased activity, which in turn promotes muscle weakness, joint contractures, and loss of range of motion. This, in turn, can lead to more pain and loss of function, and even less activity. Exercise can help you to break free from this devastating cycle.

Healthy body, healthy joints
Listen to your body as you exercise and report any problems to your doctor.
Warming up and cooling down will help protect your heart and your joints. Stretching exercises, good shoes, and good technique will also reduce your risk of musculoskeletal injuries. With these simple precautions and a dose of common sense, exercise will be safe for your joints.

Can Your Chiropractor Help?
Doctors of chiropractic, by the nature of their work, can detect the earliest degenerative changes in the joints. They see the impact of degenerative changes in the spine, as well as in the hips, knees, and other weight-bearing joints. Doctors of chiropractic are also trained to relieve the pain and improve joint function through natural therapies, such as chiropractic manipulation, trigger-point therapy, or some massage techniques.

Doctors of chiropractic can provide exercise counseling, helping you choose exercises that are best for you. If a sore or swollen joint prevents you from exercising, talk to your doctor of chiropractic about other drug-free pain-relief options, such as applying heat or cold to the affected area. In addition, your doctor of chiropractic can help you choose proper supplements that play important roles in arthritis treatment and prevention.