The link between extra weight and increased osteoarthritis risk Doctors have historically advised patients diagnosed with osteoarthritis to lose weight in order to lessen the stress on the joints. Now doctors are also advising overweight patients to lose weight to decrease their osteoarthritis risk. The Arthritis Foundation posted this overview on fat and osteoarthritis and discussed the links between osteoarthritis and obesity in a second post. The latter points out "...year after year of obesity fuels a steady barrage of friendly fire that in turn generates low-level chronic inflammation. Not an inflamed immune system, like an infection but a soft drum-beat of immune proteins that over time can damage tissues such as joints, "˜that's insidious because it's continuous,' says Robert...
Starting Conservative Treatment for Hip OA with Physical Therapy For the conservative treatment of hip osteoarthritis to be effective, it must include some level of education, manual therapy, and therapeutic exercise. While over-the-counter(OTC) and prescription painkillers may relieve pain, they do nothing to counteract the progressive tightening of the joint capsule and decreasing range of motion(ROM). This is why physical therapy is so important in the management of hip OA, as it can both relieve the pain and improve mobility, by mobilizing the joint capsule in the hip and relaxing the muscles around it. This reduces patients' need for drugs and improves their ability to move and exercise. That in turn decreases the possibility of other co-morbidities which often accompany...
There is no cure for osteoarthritis, so why bother? No, you can't cure hip osteoarthritis. But yes, physical therapy can treat the secondary effects, including pain, tightness of the muscles around the hip joint, and increasing loss of mobility-related to the progressive tightening of the joint capsule. Physical therapy as conservative therapy has a low profile, and many providers "including surgeons and primary care physicians" don't realize that it can significantly reduce patients' need for drugs and also increase their mobility and tolerance for exercise. This, in turn, decreases the risk of other co-morbidities related to inactivity which often accompany the direct pain and symptoms of hip osteoarthritis. Here's Dr. Tony Rocklin, a longtime proponent of pre-surgical conservative treatment, talking...
What's a labral tear? Labral tears are a hip pathology that can be caused by trauma, structural abnormalities, or repetitive motions (particularly those in sports). The labrum is a rim of cartilage around the hip socket that helps keep the head of the femur (thigh bone) inside the acetabulum (hip socket). A labral tear is a tear in the labrum; patients feel pain deep in the groin on the side of the involved hip, and may also have a locking sensation or hear a clicking in their affected hip. Trauma, for example, from a car accident or from playing contact sports, can cause a hip labral tear. Some people are born with hip problems that can accelerate wear and tear...
Therapeutic exercise = “medicine” for many chronic illnesses Therapeutic exercise is a key component in the conservative treatment of hip osteoarthritis. A paper published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine & Science in Sports provides the up-to-date evidence-based basis for prescribing therapeutic exercise for hip osteoarthritis and more than twenty other chronic diseases. Exercise as medicine “ evidence for prescribing exercise as therapy in 26 different chronic diseases was written by B.K. Pederson and B. Saltin and published in September 2015. In the section focused on osteoarthritis, the authors observe Patients with osteoarthritis have a low physical activity level (Semanik et al., 2012), low muscle strength, and impaired muscle function (Roos et al., 2011; Segal and Glass, 2011) and go on...
