Dr. Jeremy Andrews, a chiropractor at West Chiropractic, discusses the differences between osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA) in knee pain, and how to manage and prevent these conditions.
Osteoarthritis (OA):
Definition: A degenerative disease caused by wear and tear, leading to cartilage deterioration in joints.
Common Sites: Knees, hips, spine (lumbar and cervical), and fingers.
Symptoms: Pain, stiffness, decreased movement, and swelling. Bony nodules in finger joints can lead to stiffness and fine motor control issues.
Causes: Aging, injuries (e.g., sports injuries), and mechanical stress causing joint misalignment and cartilage wear (especially in the knee’s medial joint).
Management and Prevention:
Exercise: Strengthening exercises to support knee alignment and reduce joint pressure.
Techniques: Using resistance bands for leg lifts, bolstering with pillows for joint gaps, and massaging tight muscles (like the ITB) to relieve pressure.
Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA):
Definition: An autoimmune disease where the body attacks its cartilage, leading to systemic inflammation and joint degeneration.
Common Sites: Knees, fingers (knuckles), neck, hips, toes, and multiple joints.
Symptoms: Whole body stiffness, fatigue, sharp joint pain, swelling, redness, and systemic symptoms affecting other organs.
Severity: Considered more severe than OA due to its systemic nature and potential to affect multiple organs.
Management:
Specialist Care: Essential to see a rheumatologist for proper diagnosis and treatment.
Medications: Often required to manage inflammation.
Chiropractic Care: Can help with joint movement but should be part of a comprehensive plan overseen by a specialist.
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which is worse for your knee pain is it osteoarthritis or rheumatoid arthritis today we’re going to be talking you through exactly the difference between the two arthritic diseases how you can manage them and how you can avoid them causing problems with your knee which is ultimately going to affect your ability to stay mobile independent active and healthy long term my name is Dr Jeremy Andrews I’m a doctor of Chiropractic here at West Chiropractic in Su where we help people with chronic back pain and knee pain deler healthier longer and more independent life free from painkillers and avoiding risky surgery where we can so let’s start with osteoarthritis so osteoarthritis is one of the more common arthritic degeneration diseases it is very typical in people that get older that’s usually the population that we deal with here in the clinic as well so there’s always going to be some sort of arthritic change in the bones so what does it actually mean well osteoarthritis is wear tear degeneration in the joints it is very common in the knees the hip and the spine spine we have it mostly in the lumber spine which is the lower back but also we get it in the cervical spine cervical meaning neck so how does it happen well primarily it is a wear tear degeneration disease where the cartilage in between the joints starts to wear out and this can then cause problems with inflammation and then bone on bone degeneration around the bone and the joints causing pain stiffness and achiness so obviously we’re going to talk about how it happens in the knee today but it can also happen in the hip the lumber spine uh the cervical spine but also in the finger fingers as well so very typically it affects the end joints of the fingers and you’re going to get some bony nodules around the outside there this over time can cause stiffness problems with picking things up or you know fine modes control of the fingers so it’s really important if you do start to get that change in the actual bone in the joint those nobbly bits on the outside that you start takes an action sooner rather than later okay so here we have a knee joint this is the knee from the front on here so can you see this KNE capap there this is the the hip bone we call it the femur and you’ve got the tibia and then the FIB on the outside here uh the pink bits those are the ligaments that surround the knee and this is the tendon that comes through here the patella tendon so what can often happen is we can take a knock to the knee from a sports injury a fall a bump and it can cause the the tracking of the knee so where the knee is like translating Force like this cause the tracking to be off so the kneecap can start to move like this can cause instability around that area it usually starts to wear away this medial joint here medial being inside so the inside of the knee is the most common place to get osteoarthritis in the knee now this cartilage here is called meniscus so the meniscus starts to wear away it’s a soft material that’s supposed to be just a pad so if there’s more weight going through that side it’s going to cause more pressure on the meniscus it’s going to cause issues in the long run so we want to make sure that we get that tracking as as pure as possible to prevent any osteoarthritic buildup so how do you know if you’ve got osteoarthritis in the knee well firstly there going to be stiffness and decrease movement so you may find it difficult to bend the leg like this you may have issues going up and down the stairs putting socks on on putting your trousers on where you have to bend the knee and flex the knee that’s because there’s going to be more inflammation in that area it’s going to cause it to get you know swollen as well so if there’s swelling in that area that can also indicate some sort of osteoarthritis as well as a lack of movement so we call it a decreased range of motion so when the knee is bending like this you may not get the whole thing and that’s going to cause a lot of problems with the knee as well so let me show you a couple of things that you can do to help prevent osteoarthritis but also if you do have early onset osteoarthritis try and stop the degradation of it getting worse you can never reverse any bone bony change but it’s really important we try and put a stop to it and increase the strength around the knee okay so uh let me show you this one here this is very simple to start with so you can start just by sitting down and I’ve got a the band here my trusty the band if you haven’t got some of these I would highly recommend you invest in something online on Amazon just type in theab band and it will come out there so what you can do is you just wrap it around the base of the chair Table leg find something that’s going to be pretty secure and going to use my right leg here you can do it on both legs so very simply you want to take a bit of tension onto the the band so yeah I’ve looped this round quite a lot here so you really want to make sure it’s nice and tight on here and it’s simply just trying to kick the foot like this okay so simple kick like this like so anything from 10 to 15 times is perfect nice and slow let me show you from the side so take the tension like this we’re just very simply pushing like that it’s going to build stability through this muscle here the quad muscle front of the leg it’s going to help the tracking of the knee joint to help take pressure off that knee okay nice so that’s the first one and then second thing you can do is grab a bolster pillow like this you can also roll up a towel as well and then you just want to put this underneath your knee so say my right knee is the affected knee just going to have that like that I’m all I’m going to do is I’m going to tense my leg up like this what this is going to do is is going to help to Gap The Joint it’s going to help to stretch through the area I can also lift my toe in this direction as well so pulling my pulling my toes towards my core and relax and then coming back hold for 5 seconds and then relax and then pulling back in like this it’s going to really help us to flex The Joint open it up get some extension through there when you so flexing like this that’s when you bend the knee extension is like that it’s going to close the joint flex is going to open the joint like this so yeah 10 times again you can do on both sides do it mainly with the affected knee okay I love using the massage gun as well so the massage gun is great if you’re just working on those tissues around the outside of the leg so very often with kneecap tracking issue where it’s going to put pressure onto that inside cartilage there’s going to be some imbalance in the muscles so on the outside of the leg here this is going to be very tight it’s called your ITB it’s going to be quite weak on the inside so you want to work on the outside of the leg you can do it standing but remember the muscle is going to be tense so I tend to do it either lying L down or just sitting like this and just working up and down pushing a little bit harder so you feel that the massage going to has to start working a bit harder and all the way up and down the leg all the way up to the hip don’t go on the hip that’s the Bony section remember never go on the Bony section with the massage gun you only want to go on muscle and flesh see I’m just staggering like this going little circular movements as well just helping taking that pressure off you can go quite hard on this cuz this muscle is very very tight in a lot of people it’s called the ITB so really good to get this one worked out out so as the ITB gets tight the inside of the leg tends to get weaker so this is a muscle that if you ever watched any professional cycling to of France is going on the moment they have very very big inside quad muscles because of the stability they have in their knee from where they’re generating that torque through the bike so if it was my right leg i’ pull my left leg in like this my right leg goes straight and I turn the foot out like that and then what you’re trying to do is literally pull the leg up and hold and then come back down like this so pull the leg up and hold and then come back down pull the leg up and hold and then come back down it’s called a mzy knee raise and the muscle you want to get is the VMO so vastus medialis oblas I believe I always call VMO I’m not sure the Latin name and that’s going to really help to build a lot of tension on the inside of the knee help that knee capap track properly take pressure off that inside biscus to reduce pain stiffness give you that range as you go through going to show you on this side again so remember this this leg up turn and then pulling up like this okay pulling up like this there we go okay another one another one that I love this is not a strengthening exercise but more stretch so again take the involved leg here hold on to something hold on to a chair or the door and just pull the leg up like this now really try and keep your hips Square so this why you got to stand on hold on to something cuz my balance isn’t very good so keep your hips Square make sure that your knees are in line and you’re really trying to push your hip forwards so I’ll show you what I mean in a second you don’t want the leg flaring out to the side so just a stretch to help take pressure off the front of the leg now for on the side so you see like this we’re not doing this arching the back we’re literally trying to push this hip forwards again hold on to something so pushing the hip forwards like that is going to increase the stretch through the front of the hip and through the leg muscle there so pushing through like this not bending like that not pulling the leg all the way back it’s keep the leg fixed push through the hip squeeze the bck and that’s going to help to increase the stretch there hold that 30 seconds repeat three times okay so let’s move on to rheumatoid arthritis so in my opinion rheumatoid arthritis is more severe for the knee it is much less common than osteoarthritis as it is an autoimmune disease so what does that mean well it means the body is starting to attack the cells in the cartilage so essentially the body’s fence mechanism views the cartilage cells as foreign so they think it’s you know like like a virus and not the same mechanism but it says that’s not supposed to be there so it starts attacking it and degenerating it which causes the cartilage to wear away so how do you know if you’ve got rheumatoid arthritis well it is common in the knees it’s very very common in the joints around here here so around the knuckles around the first joint on the fingers here as well around the knuckles and around this bit here but also you can get it in the neck you can get it in the hips the knees the toes it’s a lot more common it’s more of a systemic arthritis so rather than just having osteoarthritis in one knee or one hip rheumatoid tends to go to a lot of joints you get whole body systemic kind of stiffness fatigue pain sharp pain in certain joints there’s a lot of Boggess swelling redness where the body is attacking those those cells a lot of infl and buildup as well so also doesn’t just affect the joints it can also affect other organs and other cells so it’s really important that you do get proper management with this seeing rheumatologist one of the best ways to manage rheumatoid arthritis is by seeing a specialist in this chiropractice can help in terms of the movement and getting joints moving but really you need a specialist rheumatologist to help prescribe some medication potentially to reduce the inflammation and by telling you exactly what you need to do and if a chiropractor is part of that plan you’re more than happy to help but please go and see a rheumatologist first some of these exercises I showed you for the arthritis may be applicable for the rheumatoid only if the inflammation is low again you need to check with the rheumatologist first it is more Sinister it is more severe doesn’t mean that it can’t be managed with the right medication and the right treatment plan but it is something that needs to be seen with a specialist okay thank you so much for listening today I really appreciate your time if you like the video please hit the like button subscribe to the channel for our regular updates and of course you can grab copies of my best selling books here in the show notes below we got the first one the secret cure to back pain how to avoid a lifetime of painkillers and surgery and how to transform your back is the second edition see you soon [Music]