5 Natural Treatment Options To Do First Instead Of A Knee Replacement

In this video, I’m going to cover with you five natural treatment options that you should do first, before considered going to have a knee replacement surgery. The information in this video will be especially helpful for you, if you’ve been told by your doctor that you might need an knee replacement surgery sometime in the future. Or maybe they’re talking about having one soon. So watch the whole way through so that you don’t miss a thing.

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. I’m a specialist physical therapist at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And this channel specializes in helping people stay healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgery injections, and pain medications. Please consider subscribing to our channel so that you don’t miss out on any of the helpful videos we upload every week. So let’s get into it.

The first recommendation that’s completely natural that I have for you if you’ve got knee arthritis problems, and you’ve been told that you need a knee replacement is using a cane. Now if you are out there, and you’ve never used a cane before, this might be one that you’re cringing at and thinking oh, then I’m feeling older.

This makes me feel all part of the old crew, my mom or my dad used to use a cane or my grandpa or grandma used to use a cane. If you are even younger. There is just a social stigma tied to using a cane. Because it is labeled as it helps you become labeled as being old. But let me frame it differently for you use a cane temporarily. Now it’s true.

If you begin to use a cane, the more likely you are to never get off of it. But you have control over that it is possible for you to get off a cane. It’s just that people don’t get strong enough, they don’t get well enough in whatever body part they’re hurting in to completely get off the cane. But you can get off the cane. So tell yourself right now, I’m going to use this temporarily.

Now the reason why it’s helpful for you if you’ve got a knee problem is because if you can get that cane in your hand, you want to use it opposite the side that your leg is hurting. So for instance, if it’s your right knee, you’re going to hold that in your left hand. And when you step onto your right knee, your left hand with the canes and go down so that you can lean onto your left hand and take weight off the right knee or vice versa.

If it’s your left knee, you’re going to put it in your right hand. The reason to do that is because if you can take pressure off your knee, you give it a better shot at healing and calming down. Chances are if you went to the doctor recently, because of your knee, it’s been hurting, it’s probably been swelling, it hasn’t been moving.

Normally it’s been stiff, you’ve had all the issues associated with knee arthritis or meniscus tears. And that’s what’s led you to the point where you’re thinking you might need a knee replacement or a doctor’s thinking you might need a knee replacement. But if you can take pressure off that knee joint and let it flare down, let it calm down, let the swelling and irritation come down, you might feel good enough to be able to get back to normal activities or at least set yourself up to begin to fix the root problem.

And offloading your knee is going to help tremendously so that you can still do your daily things, you can still walk around in your home, you can still go to work, you can still take care of things the way you normally do. But you’re offloading the body with the cane. And there’s other ways that people cheat doing this.

A common one that I hear about is people go to the grocery store, or they go shopping at some store and they lean on the shopping cart that works. If you’re that type of person, fantastic. As long as you take pressure off your knee that’s bothering you, and you get some motion some exercise in through walking, it’s generally going to be a good thing for you as long as you’re using the right muscles as well.

But consider using a cane get over the social stigma. Jump into it, go buy one at the store, they’re cheap, you can probably get one at a thrift store a hammy down store like the Salvation Army goodwill type of store for relatively cheap and if you go to your local grocery store, and in their first aid kit or a Walmart, they’ll have them there as well. And they shouldn’t cost you more than 20 or $30.

If you want to get a higher end nicer looking one, then the sky’s the limit on canes get can get pretty expensive, but it doesn’t cost you a lot. It’s going to save you having a knee surgery potentially. Number two is taking supplements plus water now those needs to go together because this has to do with what you consume what you put in your body.

Now the assumption here is that you’re eating a decent diet. Yeah, you might enjoy some sweets, or you know some junk food here and there maybe a little bit more than the average person, but chances are that you have adequate nutrition to generally heal. Now if you take certain supplements that are known to help knee problems, like cartilage problems, joint problems, then you increase your chances of healing and setting yourself up to avoid that knee surgery.

Some of the most common ones are Glucosamine Chondroitin Tumeric is an anti-inflammatory one. MSM is another one and of course drink tons of water that when it comes to water, let me give you specific number. Generally, you should be drinking about 100 ounces per day, which equates to just under three liters of water a day. If you’re on the metric system, there’s small variations based on your size.

Of course, if you’re a smaller person, you could get away with less water. If you’re a bigger person, you probably need a bit more water. And then it has to do with humidity, the amount of sweat that you do normally, you might be a person that sweats a lot, you might be in an environment that you sweat a lot for whatever reason you might exercise a lot, you have to adjust for all those things, there isn’t a perfect number that anyone can give you.

You just have to up your water intake is the bottom line. And now a tip for the water because the vitamins, the supplements, you know, you go to the store, you buy them. In fact, I’ll drop a link in the description below for one that we recommend off of Amazon. If you want to go check that out.

But go to your store, get yourself some glucosamine, chondroitin, turmeric, MSN, those are the ones that I mentioned, there’s other things out to the people do like bone broth, increase your intake of joint supplement and in vitamins, and then increase your water intake along with it, just drink more water is the bottom line, you’re going to be having to go to the bathroom, you’re just going to have to deal with it, it’s a much better situation to be in than having a knee replacement.

And right now, while you’re healing is when it’s most critical. Once your knees feeling better. Yeah, you should still be drinking plenty of water and staying very hydrated. But right now, it’s especially critical for you to up your water intake enough while you’re healing from your knee injury. Number three is a mostly natural solution here.

Now I say mostly because it is an injection, I’m going to be I’m going to be talking about regenerative medicine, and specifically some injections associated or that you can go get from a regenerative medicine specialist. Now, just to give you a brief overview regenerative medicine is this is a part of medicine that’s focused on regenerating cartilage and ligaments and tendons, tendons and those kinds of things. Now, the big three are going to be stem cells.

The next one is highly ironic acid injections. And the third one is platelet rich plasma or PRP injections. Now all of these are considered natural injections because they’re not technically medications. I mean, they are synthesized a bit processed a bit in a doctor’s office or a lab. Of course, it’s not like drinking bone broth or using a cane. But it’s also not medication that’s known to harm you. Versus stem cells, hyaluronic acid and PRP, platelet rich plasma is technically all stuff that the body produces.

So it’s kind of considered natural in that respect. Versus like a cortisone injection or some sort of pain medication. Those are not natural things. Those are medications that were designed in a lab in order to reduce pain and inhibit and start new processes in the inside the body, I won’t go into the details. But stem cell therapy is inserting cells that haven’t differentiated yet. To put it simply, it’s the basic cells that can turn into a cartilage cell hopefully, and you can create new cartilage cells, the research is mixed on this. But it’s an option for you.

This is the most expensive type of natural injection that you can get. Because stem cells are just kind of hard to find and come by, there’s different ways that doctors do it, you can get stem cells from your own body, you can get stem cells from other places. That’s the whole controversial part of it. But if that’s something that you’re interested in, you might go that direction. Hyaluronic acid is a type of acid that’s already inside your knee joint.

Of course, it’s synthesized in the lab when they go in injected into your knee. So the theory is that it nourishes the inside of your joints and helps your cartilage to heal. PRP or platelet rich plasma is taken from your own blood, you’ll go get your blood drawn, and then they put it in a centrifuge machine, which is the one that spins really, really fast and it separates out the platelets from the plasma.

And then they give you the platelet rich plasma into your knee joint with the hopes that there’s stuff in there that’s going to heal the cartilage and help you improve your situation. All of these are experimental. Currently, they are not proven to work, they are a little more costly than using a cane for instance or taking some supplements.

But if that’s something that you have access to that something that you desire, it’s worth a shot. I have not seen any cases personally, that have gotten worse as a result of trying these things. So I think it’s fair game, if as long as you want to go do it, go for it, and that might help you out.

Number four is weight loss. Now I’m going to hang here for just a moment because I get questions on this all the time. I’m going to try to answer some of the sub questions for this. One of the biggest questions I get is if I lose weight, will it make my knee pain better? And the answer to that is it depends.

You have to realize that with most knee problems, especially knee arthritis, which is what tends to lead to knee replacement surgery later on in life. It’s a matter of pressures in the joint and it’s not always from your weight. It’s usually from muscle imbalances within the thigh in the hip.

Usually the glutes are too weak and the quads and front of the thigh are too dominant in that compresses the joint regardless of your weight. We see people all the time that are of a good way, they’re not overweight, and they still get near arthritis because of this muscle imbalance problem. Now, we do see people that are overweight, that also get knee problems that lead to near placements. And weights usually been a factor in their life.

And they may have other issues related to their weight, like diabetes, or, you know, blood pressure problems, heart problems. And so that kind of becomes a scapegoat of the reason that health declines in people. But I have seen people that are obese get better in their knee problems when they fix the root problem. Now, if you think of a pie chart, a circle, usually with knee problems, the biggest chunk of that problem of your knee problem is the muscle imbalance. And if you address that muscle imbalance, chances are, you’re going to improve your knee problem tremendously, which leaves weight as a secondary thing to treat to address.

Now, I’m a big proponent of if you have a weight problem, you definitely should look into fixing it. But if you have a weight problem and knee problem, don’t ignore treating the root problem of your knee issue, which is that muscle imbalance likely and pursue weight loss, you need to work both situations at the same time. That’s just the situation that you’re in right now. But I would pursue going after the root problem. Now how much weight is too much?

That’s another question I get all the time. Generally, what I’ve seen is if you’re overweight, by about 50, to 60 pounds or more, then the if we’re talking about that pie chart, again, weight becomes a bigger factor for you, you can still get better. Like I said, you could probably still be close to 100 pounds overweight, fix a root problem of the muscle imbalance for your knee and still improved tremendously.

But there does become a tipping point where if you have so much weight beyond your normal weight, then it is becoming a factor in the pressure is going through your knee. And that becomes a bit more of a priority than fixing the muscle imbalance. But muscle imbalances still need to be addressed. The fifth natural option for avoiding a knee replacement is going to be exercise.

Now I’m hugely biased towards this being a physical therapist myself. I’m a big proponent of exercise. But the fact of the matter is there’s so much research you can ask any health care professional out there about the research behind knee osteoarthritis, and how exercise helps it it’s indisputable. It is it’s just irrefutable. We know that exercise the correct kind helps knee arthritis.

The big question that people run into, and face is which exercises, that’s always a big question mark, because some exercises will make your knee pain worse, some exercises will progress your arthritis versus the right exercise can make your knee feel better right away. And then the and then a different exercise from that one is what you’re going to need to be doing to make your knee pain go away for the long-term progressions of exercises over time over weeks, months, possibly even years is really what people need in order to be able to control near arthritis, enough to avoid having a knee replacement.

Now the next question that you might have is what I do all the time is where do I start? What question what exercise do I do first, which one’s best for me. And again, it depends. It really depends on where you are currently, right now you might have a very swollen knee, you might not be able to bend very much or you might actually be able to bend just fine and be on your feet quite a bit, but it hurts after you’re on your feet too long.

Whatever the situation is, there’s exercises out there for you. We’ve got a ton here on this channel. I’ll link a playlist down here below for knee arthritis. Start going through those videos and learn about where you are right now so that you can figure out which are the best exercises for you for you to do today and which ones to progress to in the future.

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