So You Have Arthritis… Now What?
Perhaps it was a pain that you have been living with for a long time or it was a pain that just happened out of the blue…
You went to urgent care or your primary provider, got an X-Ray and then you got the news: you have arthritis.
So Now What?
The Bad News: Arthritis does not go away.
The Good News: Physical Therapy is an excellent option for addressing the underlying conditions that drove the development of arthritis in the first place so that..
The progression of the arthritis is slowed or stopped
The irritation of the arthritic area is lessened or stopped
You learn lots of tools for preventing re-irritation of the arthritic area
You learn lots for tools managing the pain coming from an arthritic area if it ever gets re-irritated again.
In order to understand how and why physical therapy works in treating arthritis, it is important to understand how arthritis forms in the first place.
Wolff’s Law: Bone will grow in response to the forces applied to it.
The Good Side: This helps build bone to heal breaks or fractures. This also helps to prevent or treat osteoporosis, where bone density is lost.
The Not-So-Good Side: Bad movement habits and bad posture changes how gravity loads and compresses a joint.
The protective covering of the joints (cartilage) wears down.
The bone becomes exposed, creating additional stress within the joint.
In response to those extra forces and stresses, bone grows and the joint surface becomes:
Thickened or narrowed
Rough or uneven
Which can then become irritated or inflamed.
How Physical Therapy Helps With Arthritis
Physical Therapy retrains your posture.
Stability in the body starts with the spine and then extends out through the joints closest to it - the hips and the shoulders. Poor alignment in the spine, shoulders and hips changes the way gravity pushes down through the body and the stress on the joints to stay upright, move as well as the impact absorbed through the legs from the ground.
Physical Therapy reactivates and retrains your core.
Your core is actually a group of the deepest muscles that surround each joint, including your spine. When they work as a group or as a system, they maintain a healthy suspension and “lift” required to maintain your alignment against gravity. When there is poor activation of these deep core muscles it is like driving around in a car without a shock and suspension system. That contributes to the extra stress on your joints eventually leading to arthritis.
Physical Therapy teaches you tools for decreasing then preventing re-irritation of the arthritic area.
With their exam, the physical therapist will determine:
Areas that get too much stress
Areas that get too much impact
Where your posture alignment against gravity is off
Which muscles are too tight and overused
Which muscles are weak and need strength and coordination
Using the information found in their movement exam, your physical therapist will give you a customized program that can include stretches, strengthening and coordination exercises that will correct the underlying problems. If you keep doing your exercises consistently even after you have finished physical therapy your movement will likely stay healthy enough that you can continue to:
Keep doing the things you enjoy with less pain
Keep the arthritis from getting worse
Prevent the return of your pain
If your pain does return, often by going back to doing your exercises every day for 2 weeks, you are able to return to the point you were at after finishing physical therapy.
To get started, make an appointment and visit these blog posts!
