St Peters Chiropractic Exercise Ideas for Knee Osteoarthritis Management
Many people have knee osteoarthritis in both or one knee. That doesn’t cause sufferers to feel any better about it. Old Mill Chiropractic has some new exercise tips and treatments our St Peters knee osteoarthritis (KOA) patients will want to try for themselves.
KNEE OSTEOARTHRITIS (KOA): What It Is and How Common It Is
Knee osteoarthritis is aging-related and everywhere! 86 million people around the world over the age of 20 were diagnosed with it in 2020. Typically, knee osteoarthritis sufferers experience a loss of knee extensor strength, a greater severity of knee pain, and a decline in functional performance. (1) Knee osteoarthritis is the degeneration of cartilage, part of the natural aging process whether we like it or not. Physical activity has demonstrated a positive effect on cartilage structure even though just which physical activity is best has yet to be determined. (2) Old Mill Chiropractic sees new treatment ideas being studied a lot.
KOA TREATMENT: Your St Peters chiropractor has it.
A chiropractic treatment approach has shown promise. A trial of treatment based on principles of Cox® flexion distraction decompression for knee osteoarthritis – namely distraction of the knee – resulted in relief of patient-perceived pain from 7.7 (out of 10) to 1.8 in a mean of 5.3 visits in 3 weeks for 25 patients. (3) Old Mill Chiropractic can link this treatment (and even some cartilage-supporting nutrition!) with your home-exercise for relief.
KOA TREATMENT: YOU, our St Peters knee pain patient
Despite the benefits of exercise on KOA is well known, KOA sufferers do not very well continue the exercise practice. One study set up an easy-to-follow video series and calendar system that automatically noted when their did the exercises that resulted in an 82.4% participation rate. Not bad! The patients also reported satisfaction, pain reduction, and better physical function. (4) One 4-week intervention of unilateral, non-KOA knee extensor strength training produced significant improvement in the knee extensor strength of the knee with KOA! This is called “cross education phenomenon.” The improved extensor strength and neuromuscular function of the knee with KOA continued for 3 months. (1) Old Mill Chiropractic is pretty confident a KOA sufferer will not care which knee is exercised as long as relief is forthcoming! A proposed YOGA (YOGa and strengthening exercise for knee osteoArthritis) study was recently proposed to see how yoga’s mind-body exercise format - known to improve flexibility, muscle strength, balance and fitness - might reduce the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis and even enhance other outcomes like pain, function, quality of life, gait speed, cost effectiveness, and others. (5) Another study considered how blood flow restriction with low and high load resistance exercise of the KOA-affected knee impacted various blood tests in female patients with unilateral KOA and found that markers for skeletal muscle tissues were increased. (6) All these studies on a variety of approaches to handle knee osteoarthritis may hopefully find a way to ease/prevent/better manage this common ailment.
CONTACT Old Mill Chiropractic
Listen to this PODCAST with Dr. Luigi Albano on The Back Doctors Podcast with Dr. Michael Johnson as he illustrates beneficial chiropractic knee treatment via The Cox® Technic System of Spinal Pain Management for patients with KOA.
Schedule your St Peters chiropractic appointment soon. Are you ready for some knee pain relief? Come see us!
