Can Knee Arthritis Be Cured

Are you suffering from knee Arthritis? And are you wondering if your knee arthritis problem can be cured? Well, the answer depends on how you define a cure. And I’m going to give you a definition that is not mainstream medical.

It’s probably going to shock you so want to listen to the whole video to make sure that you fully understand how I defined a cure for knee arthritis, because it may help you out tremendously. And getting back to being healthy, active, and mobile again, despite your knee arthritis problem.

I’m Dr. David Middaugh and I’m a specialist physical therapist from El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. This channel is focused on making videos to help you keep healthy, active and mobile, while avoiding unnecessary surgeries, injections and medications. Be sure to subscribe and turn on your notifications so that you don’t miss out on any helpful tips that we share each week.

Now let’s talk about knee arthritis. To be specific, I’m talking about knee osteoarthritis. I use arthritis synonymously using the same but really there’s different types of arthritis, psoriatic arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis and others. But I’m not talking about those I am talking about osteo arthritis in the knee, but I’ll be seeing arthritis, because that’s kind of what everybody says.

Anyway, my answer regarding the osteoarthritis is yes, it can be cured. Now, the intent of this video today is not to teach you how to fix your knee arthritis problem. But instead, to give you a different perspective on what a cure is, because it gets confusing how the medical field defines a cure.

Now if you’re looking for a video on how to fix knee arthritis, I’ve linked several below in the description, as well as a link to our 28 day me health and wellness boost program. You can learn more about that in the links in the description.

My intent on today’s video is to get clear on what a cure really is. If you define a cure for knee arthritis, as having an X ray and MRI, or a CT scan of your knee, that looks completely brand new, as if your knee never had any arthritis at all.

So you’ve been diagnosed with arthritis in the past, then you did some sort of treatment, that cured your problem. And then you had another X ray MRI or CT scan some sort of imaging done on your knee, and you’re expecting for that image to be completely clear of arthritis.

If that’s how you would define being cured from knee arthritis, then in those circumstances, knee arthritis is not curable. The fact is that if you’ve been diagnosed with the arthritis in the past, if they found knee arthritis in your imaging and your X ray, MRI or CT scan, then you will probably always have some evidence of knee arthritis. In the future.

If you have another knee imaging study done. If you have any x rays, MRIs, or any of those things that I mentioned, you will probably always show up with some knee arthritis on your imaging findings.

But that doesn’t mean that your knees are going to be hurting. And doctors will tell you that you have arthritis, they they’ll probably tell you, there’s no cure for it, they’ll probably say you’re always going to have this on your X ray whenever they look at the films. And they’re just going to look at things that they can do for you that can alleviate the pain in the short term. Because that’s what physicians do.

They prescribe medications, they give injections, and they refer you out to surgeons and of course surgeons do surgery. That’s what they’re trained to do. And they’re good at it. And I’m thankful that we have Physicians and Surgeons out there because sometimes we need medications. Sometimes we need injections. And sometimes we need surgeries.

The fact is, that’s not their specialty fixing, curing knee pain. The fact is that curing the arthritis is not their specialty, their specialty is treating the symptoms of pain from the arthritis. That’s why you get the medications injections and surgery. What’s missing from this definition is how your knees feel.

Because when you look at that X ray, the MRI, the CT scan, or if you have that paper that report from the radiologist, and you read all the big medical words that sound terrible, like degenerative arthritis, and you know, loss of cartilage or the doctor says something like bone on bone in your knee, then it can it can feel bad.

But the reality is your knees can feel painless despite having those findings. So given that knowledge and this is scientific medical research that’s been done by the way, there’s there let me just briefly explain this to you.

There has been studies done where they’ve had people with knee problems and people without any problems all get in her eyes. And they give the MRI findings to radiologists, which are physicians and know how to read x rays and MRIs and all that and they tell them to categorize who has pain who doesn’t have pain, just based on the MRI, MRI findings without ever having seen the patients and they can’t consistently do it.

The MRIs, the X rays, those are not the final definitive tool use to define a person function or ability to live without knee pain. Now it’s clinical arthritis, regardless of whether or not you have knee pain. So I invite you to adopt a different definition for a cure of knee arthritis.

If you’re watching this video, and you have been told that you have knee arthritis or you suspect that you have knee arthritis, your knees might be crunchy, you might be stiff in the morning, when you get up, it might be tough to take your first few steps.

If you’ve been sitting for a while, maybe it runs in the family, your mother or your father had knee arthritis or grandparents also had knee arthritis. That doesn’t mean that you’re going to suffer from the arthritis, it means that you likely will get knee arthritis, but it may not even hurt you, you may be able to do all the things that you want to do, despite having clinical knee arthritis. So don’t worry about a medical cure.

What I would have you worry more about is what can you do with your knees right now and how can you feel with your knees the way they are. Because if you look at it that way, if you disregard the MRIs, if you disregard the X rays and the CT scans, and you focus more on what’s really in your control on how you move, how you strengthen how strong your muscles are the support your knee, then you can take control of your knee arthritis problem.

And chances are, you can diminish the inflammation inside the joint, you can move better, you can become better at tolerating walking, being able to stand for longer periods of time, you can get all your range of motion back.

And as long as the Arthritis isn’t too severe, you can probably get back to even exercising without worrying that your knee problem is going to get worse. If this is the definition that you adopt, as far as being cured from the arthritis, then you’re going to have a much better chance at truly fixing this problem.

Because if you take on the definition of the doctor said that I have knee arthritis because of the X ray and the MRI, then you’re allowing that doctor to label you as being unable to get better. But the fact is that you can get better, you can get stronger, you can walk better and bend better. Let me take you on a brief tangent that I’m going to bring full circle back to right, it’s just to give you a different perspective on this.

Let’s talk type two diabetes. Now there’s different types of diabetes, but type two diabetes is the one that is is kind of a pandemic in the world right now. So the one that people have, from as a result of not eating well of having poor eating habits, and poor exercise habits.

What is required of somebody with type two diabetes who’s been diagnosed, labeled as having type two diabetes, is in order for them to get rid of the type two diabetes and be normal again, they have to change their eating habits and their exercise habits.

And then they have to keep up those changes over time. If this is done, they can avoid taking any medications for diabetes. If it’s not done, then what tends to happen is they’ll go to the doctor, the doctor will tell them hey, your blood sugar’s pretty high. Here you’re clinically diabetic, you have type two diabetes, I recommend this first medication, usually it’s Metformin, there might be others out there, I’m not a medicine specialist.

A low level diabetes medication will help an individual with type two diabetes to control their blood sugars so that their diabetes problem isn’t getting worse and affecting other organs. If that person doesn’t change their eating and exercise habits, at that point, what will eventually happen is their body will continue to worsen.

As far as the diabetes, their ability to process sugar and their body will decline. And that initial medication that they’ve been on will then start to not work, it won’t be effective, then they’ll go back to the doctor because they might be having some other symptoms with the go for the checkup.

And the doctor will say, Hey, I know you’ve been taking this medication, but your sugar is still kind of high, I recommend a more powerful medication. And it’s just a matter of time before certain organs start to shut down. The common one is the pancreas they don’t they don’t develop enough insulin, which is important for regulating sugar in the body.

And then you’re taking some hard stuff like insulin for to manage your diabetes, you’re essentially taking the chemical that your pancreas is supposed to produce because it can’t produce it anymore, you have to get some synthetic insulin injected into your body to manage your blood sugar.

That situation is so preventable. had that individual begun to change their eating habits and their exercise habits with beginning but I’ve had honest conversations with doctors in the situation and doctors can look like the bad guys in this situation because they’re not seen as talking to their patients about exercise and eating right.

But in reality they most of the time will mention that hey, you should be eating right and exercising more so that you can manage your weight and your blood sugar and all that so that you’re not having to take these medications but in the scenario where A doctor just has a few minutes to talk with their patient.

And what my doctor friends have told me is, you know, I’ve been talking to my patients and I just get the sense that I don’t think they’re going to change their eating habits. And I don’t think they’re going to start to exercise more and burn the calories needed to manage their blood sugar for the long term.

And as a doctor, I feel ethically responsible to give them this diabetes medication in the short term so that we can prevent them from getting worse in the short term. Having a change in their diet and exercise is more of a long term change.

And that’s not something that physicians are well suited to do in the current medical model where they just see them for a few minutes every few months, or however frequently they go to the doctor.

It really requires a daily change in order to fix a diabetes problem at the root level, which is diet and exercise. Diabetes is really the symptom of the deeper root problem, which is diet and exercise.

Now let’s talk about knee arthritis. Again, it’s the same scenario. knee arthritis is a symptom of the root problem of some strength issue and movement problem that over time has led up to that knee joint getting irritated over and over again, and then it develops knee arthritis.

That’s why for the medical perspective, there isn’t a cure for knee arthritis, there isn’t a medication that you can take an injection that you can have or a surgery that can be done to cure knee arthritis.

And doctors in the short term are giving patients medications, injections and recommending surgeries that help to mitigate the short term effects of knee arthritis, the pain, the loss of motion, the inability to sleep at night because of the pain and being able to get up and do things because of the pain.

Those there are treatments to help with that with those symptoms of knee arthritis. But fixing knee arthritis for the long term where you have clean MRIs again and x rays, there just isn’t a cure for that. What is definitely more reasonable is if that person within the Arthritis problem starts to exercise again, in the right way. And there does need to be a strategy for it.

There are certain exercises that are very, very important. And there’s certain muscles that are really important to get pressure’s right in the knee joint so that that knee joint can reduce inflammation and become pain free again and be able to tolerate more exercise without getting more inflamed so that that knee joint can become healthy.

Again, there’s a big strategy behind that and go check out those links. In the description below. Have you watched some videos to find out where to start, but the fact of the matter is, if you have seen your doctor for any arthritis problem, or if you’re planning on going to go visit your doctor for any arthritis problem, they’re probably only going to have short term solutions for you.

Because the real root of the problem is at the exercise strength and movement level, which just isn’t their specialty. And they’ll probably refer you to a physical therapist if they recognize that.

But even then, with physical therapists, there’s a subspecialty of physical therapy, where they focus on that most physical therapy focuses on helping people after they’ve had a surgery like after a knee replacement meniscectomy or something like that, which they’re fantastic at doing.

They’re fantastic at getting the range of motion back and being able to get the the person back to walking again. But fixing the underlying strength problems or muscle imbalances, that’s a whole different specialty, which is what I focus on. I’m an orthopedic manual physical therapist, and I specialize in helping people out in that scenario.

So I hope that you’ve learned something in this video, I hope that you’ve changed your definition of what a cure could look like for knee arthritis. If you’re expecting to see clear MRIs, clear x rays, it’s not coming.

But what you can expect is for your range of motion to get better for your inflammation to go down, which in turn should mean that your pain should improve. And for you to be able to tolerate being on your feet more and being able to get up quicker.

And one more thing I want to mention because this is probably going to come up in somebody’s mind. knee replacements, knee replacements they literally open up the knee joint, cut out the ends of the knee and put in artificial replacements, metal pieces prosthetics in there, so there’s no more arthritis. Technically, it can be seen as a cure for knee arthritis.

And if you had an X ray of that replace knee you wouldn’t see any knee arthritis. That would probably be the only situation in which the knee arthritis would be gone. But I want you to think about this. You still have to answer the question of what created the knee arthritis problem to begin with.

How did that individual gets to the point where their knee got so bad that a surgeon out there agreed with them that they should replace their knee and they went through the procedure and had a knee replacement done.

You have to ask what was the underlying root problem? And was it ever addressed? Because if it wasn’t, if there’s still a muscle imbalance, there’s still movement problems, which oftentimes gets worse after having a knee replacement.

Because it is major surgery, I’d say it’s one of the most major surgery aside from having a heart or a spine problem, a spine surgery done, it’s a joint replacement, you will get weaker, you will move differently after new replacement, it takes close to a year to recover from that knee replacement.

If those weaknesses and movement patterns have not been addressed, they are likely going to still be present after that person has a knee replacement. And that usually sets that person with any replacement up to wear down that knee replacement quicker than normal or to affect a joint nearby like a hip or a foot problem or the other knee will become affected too because of the way they move differently. So it’s still not a cure for knee arthritis, in my opinion, because it sets up other problems.

There’s the root problem, just like with type two diabetes is diet and exercise and diabetes. In a knee arthritis problem. The root problem is a strength issue and a movement issue the way that the individual is moving.

Hey, if you thought this video was helpful for you, and you’re thinking that you might need professional help with any problems that you can avoid having a replacement or any kind of surgery, even a less invasive surgery, and so that you can avoid having to rely on injections and medications for your knee problem.

Do you want to get to the root issue and fix the strength and fix a range of motion, you feel like you need some hands on help from a manual physical therapist. And I invite you to apply for a discovery visit, all you have to do is scroll down to the bottom of this page, find the button there that says request a discovery visit, fill in the form that pops up after that leave us your details.

Once you receive that my staff will review it and give you a call as soon as they can so that they can talk to you about your knee problem. They want to hear all about your needs situation to determine if it’s one that we can help here in the clinic. Because if it isn’t, we don’t want to waste your time and want to send you on to the next person that will help you out.

But if it is, then we’ll let you know when the next steps to get started in your discovery visit. And in case you’re wondering what a discovery visit is, it’s a 20 minute visit with a specialist physical therapist will talk all about your knee problem.

We want to hear your story, want to see how it’s behaving what what’s led up to the pain, want to get an idea for how it’s moving, we’ll put our hands on it and check it by hand. And then we’ll explain to you the diagnosis for your knee problem.

We’ll get definitive on if it is arthritis or if there’s something else in addition to knee arthritis is bothering you. And then we’ll talk about forming a plan to help out your knee arthritis problem so that you can get back to doing the things that you love. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a wonderful day.