08/09/2022

Good morning! I’m sure you’ve already seen today’s big breaking news …. it’s World Physiotherapy Day. Unfortunately, it’s not a celebration of physiotherapists everywhere, or even a festival only physios attend. Each year World Physiotherapy Day is about spreading evidence-based information on a specific healthcare topic. This year the focus is on Osteoarthritis (OA). 

The 3 main OA topics we’re highlighting for people is surrounding Prevention, Exercise and Myths & Facts relating to OA. I think I’ll touch on each topic individually and briefly, but perhaps it would be first useful to outline what is OA, and how do you recognise the signs and symptoms. 

Osteoarthritis is a condition that affects the joints in our body, most commonly the hip and knee. The key features of OA are stiffness of the joint in the morning, pain during or after increased use of the joint (walking), and limitations in the ability to do normal tasks, such as climbing the stairs, getting out of a low seat, kneeling and many others. Importantly, while OA does develop from a gradual reduction in the quality of the cartilage and/or bone, it is now understood that a person could have those changes in a joint and not have any of the above symptoms. Therefore, they do not have OA. This would be considered normal age related change. We get wrinkles on the outside, we get wrinkles on the inside! It also means that an x-ray or MRI would not be warranted, unless a number of other risk factors are evident, more on that next. 

Prevention:

When it comes to preventing any health condition, there are some risk factors we can modify and others we can’t. The modifiable risk factors for OA are being overweight, joint injury, a history of hard physical work and overuse of the joint in hobbies or activities. The non-modifiable risk factors are age over 40, being female and family history of OA. It could be argued that joint injury is a non-modifiable factor. However, I believe that given the excellent injury prevention programmes that are available to use before sporting activity, coupled with the quality of the rehabilitation programme, the likelihood and consequence of joint injury can be reduced. 

So if you don’t have many or any of these risk factors and you are free of the symptoms mentioned above, it’s likely you’re doing something right, and that’s probably regular exercise!

Exercise:

I think there is a strong belief out there that if you have joint pain and stiffness that is due to OA, then you should not exercise. Consistently, the research has shown that the opposite is true. Regular exercise at the right level for the person’s situation improves pain, strength, ability to do daily activities, balance, sleep, fitness, mood, energy levels and reduces joint stiffness and weight. That’s a lot of benefit! Of course, it requires the correct prescription and consistency of participation to achieve good results. 

Myths & Facts:

In this campaign to spread better information about OA, there are 6 misconceptions targeted. We’ve dealt with a number of them already, so let’s touch on one more. 

It is a common belief that the more pain = more damage. Pain is a very complex subject, but it is absolutely clear now that the level of pain does not correlate with findings on x-ray or MRI. Some people can have lots of change on these scans and very little pain, and others the opposite. Pain is strongly influenced by a number of factors, including but not limited to, our emotions, mood, stress, sleep quality, anxiety, level of activity, fatigue and inflammation. It is these factors that make the volume on the pain go up or down.

This week and next, we have posters and leaflets with information on these topics, from the World Physiotherapy Organisation, so please feel free to drop in to speak to one of the physiotherapists or pick-up an information sheet. You can also find lots of great resources on OA from https://world.physio/wptday.

We are also running an information evening on the Good Life with osteoArthritis Denmark (GLA:D) programme in the clinic on Tuesday the 20th of September at 7.30pm. If you’re interested please contact the clinic to reserve a place for €5. The talk will cover some of the above information in more detail and explain about how the GLA:D programme has helped thousands of people around the world with OA. We will be running the GLA:D programme in the clinic from October this year.

All the best for now,

Lonan Hughes

Chartered Physiotherapist