What is Knee Arthritis?

Knee osteoarthritis, more commonly known simply as knee arthritis occurs as a result of cartilage loss in the joint. These changes occur due to general wear and tear of the joint, and therefore, knee arthritis generally progresses as we age.

How do I Know if I Have Knee Arthritis?

Knee arthritis generally presents as pain, stiffness, and swelling in the knee that gets progressively worse. When you first get pain, it is often at its worst in the mornings and gets better as the day goes on as you move your knee. However, if you do a lot of walking on it you will probably notice that your pain gets worse as well. There is often a fine line between getting enough movement to reduce your stiffness, without doing too much and your knee getting too sore. For most people with knee arthritis there won’t be a specific mechanism that you can think of where your knee really started to hurt. 

The only problem with the symptoms of knee arthritis is that they are very similar to many other knee conditions. There are a large number of conditions that present similar to knee arthritis, this is why it is really important to see your physio and get a proper assessment so you can get the best treatment.

Should I Get an MRI or Xray to See Whether I Have Knee Arthritis?

The answer to this question often changes depending on the outcome of your physiotherapy assessment.

Before you have had an assessment from your physiotherapist, you generally don’t need to get any scans. Scans can often increase anxiety regarding our joint health due to the belief that these things are permanent, and that pain will be there forever.

Let me explain myself a bit more…

There was a recent study that sent people with no knee pain at all to get scans on their knees to see whether the findings were sometimes present even though a person has no pain at all. This study found that 1 in 6 people under the age of 40, and 4 in 10 people over the age of 40 had knee arthritis when they went and got these scans. This is a massive finding as it shows us that knee arthritis is often there even when pain isn’t. If these same people were to get knee pain and then go and have scans, they would assume that the pain was because of their knee arthritis, when many times, it isn’t. This leads to a large number of knee replacement surgeries that may not need to happen at all.

These findings show how vital it is to get a physiotherapy assessment before getting any type of scan. Even if you do happen to get a scan before you see a physiotherapist, most good physios will assess your knee before taking a look at the scan. This ensures that they are not subconsciously looking for what the scans say is there. If your physio assesses you, tells you what they think, and then takes a look at the scans and they match up, then you can be confident that what your scans show is likely what is causing your pain. However, if they don’t match up, then the scans findings are likely incidental, and you can begin treatment based on your physios findings from their assessment.

How Can I Reduce My Risk of Knee Arthritis?

There are many ways that you can reduce your risk of knee arthritis. Some of the best ways to reduce your risk of knee OA include: 

• Maintaining a healthy weight: Maintaining a healthy weight, or losing weight in order to get to a healthy weight is really important. If you are overweight, the stress on the joints increases, if this stress is increased over a prolonged period then the wear and tear on the joint will increase as well. This leads to a quicker loss of cartilage in the joint, thus increasing how quickly your knee arthritis progresses. 
• Exercising: Exercising has a number of benefits, from mental health to physical health benefits. Both resistance and endurance exercise are great ways to keep your knee joint strong and healthy. 
• Protect your joints from being injured – A good warm up is the key: As you could expect, damage to the knee joint itself will speed up the progress of knee arthritis. Now, protecting your joints from being injured may be a bit harder to control than the last two we mentioned. This is because joint injuries can occur in an instant without there being anything you were able to do. For example, if you are playing sport, there are a lot of different variables occurring, and sometimes unexpected things can happen that may lead to injury to the joint. However, there are still ways to reduce your risk of these things happening. A good warm-up massively decreases your risk. Read our article on preventing sports injuries where we discuss ways to reduce your risk of injury to the joint.  

How is Knee Arthritis Treated?

The treatment of knee arthritis will likely be slightly different for everyone depending on many factors including, what aggravates the pain, if there is a lot of swelling, how much load you can put through the joint before pain begins etc. 

However, for the most part, there are a few things that should be consistent in your treatment. If you are a visual learner, don’t hesitate to watch out Knee Osteoarthritis Masterclass video.

Early Treatment

People tend to see the physio once their pain has become chronic. There is nothing wrong with this way of thinking, it is simple human nature to assume that pain will go away soon, in many cases, for many instances of pain it does. 

However, due to this, during your first appointment with your physio your knee pain will generally be quite high, and often, there is quite a large amount of swelling through the joint. For these reasons, early treatment generally focuses on reducing pain and swelling. 

Good ways to reduce pain and swelling include: 

• Wear a compression bandage around the knee.
• Movement of the knee: Sliding your heel to your bum and then extending it is a good exercise to get some unloaded movement.
• Stationary cycling: Using a stationary bike works really well as it gets the movement that you need into the knee without the load that comes with walking or running. 

Mid-Late Treatment

Once your pain has settled down a bit your physio will guide you through a progression of activities and exercises aimed at increasing the strength of your muscles around the joint – good muscle strength helps to take load off the joint, as well as increasing the health of the joint – and gradually re-introducing loading activities. This is done in the form of things such as walking programs. A gradual progression of walking is important as it gets your joint used to slowly increasing loads, giving you the best chance of staying out of pain. 

Some good exercises for mid-late treatment include:

• Glute bridges: Lie on your back with your knees bent and your feet on the floor, then push your bum up off the floor. 
• Single leg glute bridges: Lie on your back with your knee bent, use one leg to push your bum up off the floor.
• Sit to stand: Start sitting on a chair, then stand up without using your hands at all. (P.S. If this is too difficult, use a higher chair)
• Crab Walks: First, grab a large elastic band, and put it around the outside of your ankles. You are then going to do a mini squat and then side-stepping like a crab. 10 steps each way is usually a good number to start with.

Come and See Us Today

At EmbdyHealth we are experts when it comes to knee arthritis management. If you believe you may have knee arthritis, or any type of injury, don’t hesitate to get in contact by email at [email protected], or book an appointment here.

We proudly service everywhere in Australia, including, Sydney (NSW), Revesby (NSW), Bathurst (NSW), Newcastle (NSW), Perth (WA), Gosnells (WA), Melbourne (Vic), St Kilda (Vic), Adelaide (SA), Alice Springs (NT), Darwin (NT), Canberra (ACT), Brisbane (QLD), Surfer’s Paradise (QLD), Gold Coast (QLD), and Hobart (Tas).

Don’t Forget About Our 3 Session Guarantee.

Here at EmbdyHealth we know that you’re going to love your physiotherapy. If you don’t see any improvement after 3 sessions you get your money back. That is our guarantee to you that you will have a great time at EmbdyHealth Physiotherapy.

At EmbdyHealth we offer Exceptional Physiotherapy, Unmatched Affordability, All from your Home.