Arthritis Pain
The New Outlook for Arthritis Pain - Joint Replacement doesn't need to Take so Long Anymore
The conventional wisdom among orthopedic doctors treating patients for arthritis pain has always been to put off the option of recommending knee replacement surgery for as long as possible. Doctors have always asked their patients to do what they can to wait, so that their replaced joints will end up lasting as long as they live. But orthopedic doctors do not actually have the last word in the matter. Medical experts argue that orthopedic doctors have it all wrong in the way they feel it's a good idea to wear out the natural joint as much as possible first before switching to an artificial one. It's just that doctors are stuck back in the time when replacement knee joints never lasted long enough to see people through their whole lives. Artificial knee joints back then would give up halfway through a patient's life, and they just had to go in for another round of surgery for a new replacement; an experience they would find hard surviving. This kind of caution is not really necessary today though, in a time when replacements often last a quarter century. All it achieves to exercise this kind of caution now is prolonged suffering for elderly people who go through terrible arthritis pain for years before they are allowed a replacement that will allow them to start walking around their home again.
The reason this kind of caution is completely unacceptable now is that when people suffer arthritis pain for a while, they become so debilitated, that they completely give up any kind of moving. When the body is made unable to move, it begins to lose its muscle tone and function. So once the replacement does arrive, the body is no longer in a position to take advantage of it, so atrophied and debilitated has it become. If you wait too long, you just end up replacing one kind of impairment with another.
Arthritis occurs in people when they manage to wear out the cartilage that lines our joints and cushions and lubricates them. Worn-out cartilage gets bone rubbing on bone with no lubrication, a situation that can turn very painful. Anyone who is involved in a job or sport that requires repeated motion in a particular way, is at risk of falling to arthritis one day. So is the person who is overweight. Among the elderly, arthritis is epidemic today; about 20% of all adults in this country experience arthritis pain or never-ending joint pain.
However, just the very fact that you suffer from arthritis pain doesn't inevitably put you on the road to a joint replacement one day. There are all kinds of over-the-counter prescriptions that can help. Drugs like Diacerein help manage the pain, and supplements like Glucosamine help rebuild cartilage. As long as you keep yourself in motion, and you keep your weight down, there is no reason why you should consider yourself marked for joint replacement the moment you get arthritis.
Women tend to live longer than men; and for this reason, doctors tend to ask women to put it off longer than men. And when you add to that the fact that women stoically put up with more pain for longer without complaining, you begin to see why women usually get the short end of the stick with arthritis pain. When men and women present the doctor with similar circumstances, only one out of three women will get the go-ahead for surgery; twice as many men get it though. In general, it makes no sense to put off replacement surgery. Your years of relative youth are likely to be the most active ones; if you waste those waiting to get older before you get a new joint,you'll just find out that you are 75 before you are able to move about freely. And what use is that?
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