Osteoarthritis
Osteoarthritis is a condition that affects over 8 million people in the UK. It is a condition that becomes more common as you age and is often known as a wear and tear condition.
But what does this actually mean and how can we help you with your osteoarthritic pain?
What is Osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis is caused by damage to the cartilage of a joint. It can occur in any weight bearing joint. Often it occurs through incorrect loading of a joint over many years.
If you have a flat feet, for example, this means you don't have a normal foot arch. The arch of the foot is there to absorb forces and ensure correct mechanics all the way up the lower body.
If your foot drops inwards, so will your knee, creating additional forces, usually on the inside of your knee. Over time, these forces damage the cartilage of the knee which in the end breaks down.
The job of the cartilage is to stop the bones rubbing together, so if this breaks down, the bones can rub, creating damage and pain.
How can we treat it?
The key to a healthy knee, is alignment. So we need to strengthen the leg to stop the forces running through the wrong part of the knee.
With knee osteoarthritis, we often start with the foot. If the foot is weak and lacking an arch, this is the place to start. Strengthening the foot is usually enough to get rid of the pain, but if this doesn't work, we will strengthen and rebalance the whole leg.
It is important to combine loosening with strengthening, so we will always use our hands on techniques to loosen your leg. When someone has an osteoarthritic knee, they will often "brace" with their hamstrings, because they don't want to straighten their knee, due to pain. So we will loosen these muscles to help rebalance the leg.
For hip osteoarthritis, we need to create stability in the joint, so that the hip can support itself in the correct position. Again the foot and the knee have a role to play in this, so we would look at the whole lower body, in order to solve your osteoarthritic pain.
Severe Osteoarthritis
Once the cartilage has worn away to such a level that the bone is effectively resting on bone, strength options become more limited.
This is usually because the exercises are too painful to perform and therefore clients often don't do them.
Until now, the only option at this point has been a knee or hip replacement. However, recently NICE have approved an alternative treatment for people with severe osteoarthritis and we are the first clinic in Warwickshire to have trained up in their use.
This is a product called the Apos® training shoe, and it realigns the leg while you walk, to offload painful areas and restrengthen the leg.
Find out more about this option by clicking the link below.