Treating Knee Arthritis Without Surgery

do you have knee arthritis okay we're gonna give you the top 10 ways to treat your knee arthritis without surgery and this is coming from two surgeons Hang on we're surgeons why are we tell people to do it without surgery because we'd rather have people treat it without surgery because surgery has risk okay well before we start we should thank our sponsors we literally have zero spots we have no sponsors we've never had a sponsored none of our videos are sponsored seven years no sponsors all right what's the first thing you can do we are

sponsored by one activity modification so that is your number one treatment for knee arthritis modifying your activity so we would always tell people to move so it is critical to keep moving even if you have sore hips and knees but what I would tell you is if something really really hurts consider modifying it or not doing that specific activity okay our second sponsor is weight loss okay sponsored by weight loss weight loss if you are carrying too much weight yep that might be increasing your pain from your knee arthritis so weight loss might help we've

talked about the analogy particularly going up and down the stairs that it increases the amount of weight that goes through your knees by up to seven times so if you had like a stack on that had 30 pounds of butter in it and you never got to take that knapsack off that would hurt it's a lot of Butter Pop the knapsack off you're like wow I feel better similarly if you can reduce some of your weight through healthy ways great way to reduce your knee arthritis pain and you know what 30 pounds of kale is

going to do the same thing yes you know how big your duffel bag would have to be to get to 30 pounds of kale but I'd agree it's going to help you okay number three is using modalities like physiotherapy massage acupuncture that type of treatment or physical therapy physical in the U.S physical therapy so this can teach you ways to do functional exercise to strengthen the muscles around your knee which has been shown to reduce the pain and the massaging acupuncture are more specifically to reduce the pain itself okay moving on braces okay depending on

where your arthritis is in your knee is it on the medial side is it on the lateral side is it in the patellofemoral joint there are different braces that can be made designed or off the shelf available to treat that type of arthritis in your knee right on the shelf or potentially custom brace so if you are severely bull-legged or not need our custom brace can actually push your knee back into a more normal alignment not to reverse your alignment deformity but to reduce the weight on the most affected compartment or if you're doing the

Charleston you're both or the shelves and I would say in the same categories braces would be Orthotics yeah so if you can alter the way that your feet are loaded it's going to translate into where your knees are loaded and potentially reduce your pain okay that was number four let's go on to number five number five is kind of the food area so a avoid inflammatory foods that can aggravate your arthritis and increase the number of anti-inflammatory type foods that you are consuming we have specific videos about both of these topics but food can play

a big role what are the main ones that we need to avoid Paul inflammatory foods yeah alcohol alcohol for sure causes inflammation sugar refined greens and in general processed food this is just generally good health and diet advice you might want to feel like drinking alcohol because you're so much pain but ironically okay number six over the counter medications okay you may think we're sponsored by Pharma we are not and we're talking about medications that are off patent so no one's making a ton of money off these but things like acetaminophen yep but you have

to be careful with your liver with acetaminophen that's Tylenol and actually recently they've been talking about maybe lowering the maximum amount of Tylenol that's safe which is interesting because we used to always think it was super super it's pretty safe but I keep on that anti-inflammatories yep ibuprofen naproxen yep those are NSAIDs non-steroidal anti-inflammatories they can help to reduce inflammation and reduce pain however they do have side effects because they can affect your kidneys which can then give you high blood pressure they can give you an ulcer so you have to be careful with those

medications number seven supplements so supplements not regulated like we've talked about in the past but things like turmeric glucosamine chondroitin MSN lots of anecdotal evidence to say that they help we would say the response is certainly variable generally safe risk is primarily Financial so it would be up to you to decide and in light of other things that you're taking or other medical problems they have decide whether or not it'd be safe for you okay prescription medications nice very similar to the over-the-counter medications yes but you can get over-the-counter anti-inflammatories acetaminophen and you can get

opioid over the counter in Canada you can get Tylenol one uh with a low dose of open however prescription medications are usually stronger versions or newer novel versions so for example uh uh there are newer anti-inflammatories that are more specific to joints mostly to reduce your GI risk yeah and those are prescription only yep um and of course the narcotics are available but we do not recommend narcotics or management arthritic pain definitely not okay topicals so topicals play a big role in management of pain on a daily basis and these are relatively safe because they're

because of their low absorption rate systemically so things like local anesthetics anti-inflammatories nerve agents even CBD it's becoming more and more popular yeah these play a role and I'd say speaking for my patients um half people get benefit and half people don't in the same area as Skin instead of putting on top we actually can sometimes go through the skin and do an injection intra-articular injection so that's an injection that goes right into the joint right into the knee and things we like to inject that can help our corticosteroids there's been some news and some

articles say oh it damages cartilage but if you're injecting a corticosterone into a knee where the cartilage is all damaged that's arthritis then it's probably worth it if it gives you some symptomatic relief yeah local anesthetic local anesthetic is often mixed in with that doesn't last very long hyaluronic acid which is a naturally occurring molecule in your synovial fluid that is lowered in amount when you have arthritis so often we inject hyaluronic acid to lubricate we think we say the knee but really it actually helps the chondrocytes or the cartilage cells make more hyaluronic acids

I know it's up regulated regularly and the last one is is stuff that really does not have very good evidence but again it's commonplace because there's so much marketing for sure in the oven of social media where advertising is really cheap and it's just kind of constant barrage so whether that's magnets or copper or red light therapy it's actually there is some evidence for the red lights up for some other medical conditions but not necessarily for arthritis but yeah the evidence in general is pretty weak however associated with those modalities it's a pretty significant placebo

effect you've talked about that right the placebo effect almost 30 percent so sometimes you use the these modalities and you get relief it might be the placebo effect and if that works for you okay so that's our top ten I would be remiss to say ice we always we always forget it because it seems like it's such an obvious thing but it's cheap it's easy it's safe just careful for Prospect because actually you can get frostbite from a nice package yeah and but it can make a huge difference on any painful area yeah if you

like this video please like And subscribe to our Channel leave a comment tell us what you've used that's worked for your non-operative New York right a little history here kind of paying homage to one of our earlier videos where we did this seven years ago when we were kids we were just making videos for our own patients right and then it kind of blew up and so we just thought we'd remake that video there you go subscribe to our Channel check out other alarm content and remember as always you are in charge of your own

health man we'll see you next time