Physical activity is the best available treatment for OA. It's also one of the best ways to keep joints healthy in the first place. As little as 30 minutes of moderately intense exercise five times a week helps joints stay limber and strengthens the muscles that support and stabilize your hips and knees.
For OA in general, the most helpful advice is to maintain an ideal weight, avoid overusing joints that are damaged and follow a plan of exercise that strengthens the muscles supporting the joint. Your doctor or physical therapist should be able to help you with any of these.
Use these basic self-care strategies to manage your symptoms: Apply ice or heat to help ease stiffness, pain and swelling. Lose weight (if necessary) to help reduce stress on the knees. Keep moving with activities like swimming, biking or walking.
The answer: a resounding yes! In fact, people with knee osteoarthritis who walk for exercise are significantly less likely to go on to develop worse pain, according to a 2022 study published in Arthritis & Rheumatology.
Other health conditions
Osteoarthritis may flare up after a person's health status changes. For example, this may occur due to an infection. Sudden or excessive weight gain can also cause symptoms to flare up because additional weight adds pressure to the joints.
Excess weight puts additional pressure on weight-bearing joints, such as the hips and knees. Each pound you gain adds nearly four pounds of stress to your knees and increases pressure on your hips six-fold. The extra strain breaks down the cartilage that cushions these joints and that gets worse over time.
Inherited bone structure or genetic mutations can contribute to the development of knee arthritis, as well as repetitive injury from a profession or sports. Age-related arthritis becomes common after 45 years of age. Weight is also a factor, since the knee bears much of the body's weight.
But whether it's mild or severe, you can take some steps to ease the joint pain and swelling by resting it, applying an ice or heat pack and taking an over-the-counter analgesic, like acetaminophen (Tylenol), or NSAID, like ibuprofen or naproxen.
Extra weight puts a lot of pressure on the hips and knees, which causes the cartilage in your joints to deteriorate quickly. Specifically, research shows a heightened rate of OA progression in obese people⁴ as compared to people with healthy weights.
Osteoarthritis of the knee happens when the cartilage in your knee joint breaks down, enabling the bones to rub together. The friction makes your knees hurt, become stiff and sometimes swell. While osteoarthritis in the knee can't be cured, there are many treatments to slow its progress and ease your symptoms.
Osteoarthritis is typically treated with painkillers known as non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs). These medications have an anti-inflammatory and pain-relieving effect. Examples of NSAIDs include diclofenac, ibuprofen and naproxen.
If you have osteoarthritis of the knee, you will probably feel your knee is painful and stiff at times. It may only affect one knee, especially if you've injured it in the past, or you could have it in both. The pain may feel worse at the end of the day, or when you move your knee, and it may improve when you rest.
43% of people with OA are 65 or older and 88% of people with OA are 45 or older. Annual incidence of knee OA is highest between 55 and 64 years old. More than half of individuals with symptomatic knee OA are younger than 65.
While there is no cure for osteoarthritis, the condition can be successfully self-managed in a number of cases. Osteoarthritis of the knee can range in severity; some people can have significant changes shown on an x-ray with mild symptoms and others can have severe symptoms with little physical change.
The worst exercises for people with bad knees are full-arc knee extension (using the machine at the gym), full-deep lunges, deep squats, and Hurdler's stretches. HIIT exercising (high intensity interval training) is an effective way of getting fit, fast but there are potential risks that go hand in hand with it.
Studies suggest autumn may be the sweet spot for RA while winter and spring are the most challenging. A recent study found that humidity made pain worse, especially in colder weather. Another study linked sunny, dry days to less pain and joint swelling.
Consuming high-purine foods like shellfish or beer, becoming dehydrated, experiencing sudden changes in kidney function, or local trauma to a joint (like stubbing your big toe) can also trigger flares. Taking urate-lowering medicines should lessen the likelihood of having a flare due to these triggers.
Osteoarthritis of the knee is a prevalent health issue. Despite a diagnosis of arthritis of the knee, the majority of you can live an active, happy life. But you've heard awful phrases used to describe your Xrays– phrases like Bone on Bone, bone spurs, degeneration, wearing away, etc. Those phrases scare you.
Don't push yourself too hard — that can overwork muscles and make joint pain worse. Consider these tips: Keep the impact low. Low-impact exercises help keep joint stress low while you move.
Consistency and moderation are important when it comes to walking with arthritis in the knee. To begin with, patients are encouraged to do about 10–15 minutes of light walking per day and eventually work their way up to 30 minutes per day. You can do one 30-minute walk or several shorter walks throughout the day.
1. You sit for long periods of time. If your knee hurts, you might want to stay off of it. But resting too much makes your muscles weaken and often makes knee pain worse.