A Guide to Minimizing Pain, Maximizing Function, and Redefining What’s Possible
Osteoarthritis (OA). Even the name sounds bad. But the fact is, that term is a misnomer. Degeneration isn’t a disease. Degeneration is a process. And just like any process, it can be influenced, supported, and even reversed. If something can degenerate, it can regenerate if you remove the cause of the degeneration and adopt the right lifestyle choices. Even with degeneration, there is still youthfulness in your body, always waiting to spring forth.
Living with OA makes you part of a large community. Over 32 million Americans, and over half a billion people worldwide, are navigating this reality every day. By 2050, it’s estimated that 1 billion people will have OA. But there’s a big difference between coping with OA and living vibrantly with it.
What It Is
OA, also referred to as degenerative joint disease (DJD), is the most common form of arthritis worldwide. People experience OA when the protective cartilage that cushions the ends of bones gradually wears. So, you might be thinking it’s an old people problem. However, OA does affect young people. Regardless of age, the result is joint pain, nerve pressure, stiffness, and decreased mobility.
Most people don’t realize that while OA commonly affects the knees, hips, hands, and spine, it can affect any joint. Additionally, it is commonly assumed that OA and its symptoms are just normal aspects of aging—but they’re not. OA is the result of accumulated stress, injury, inflammation, nerve interference, and imbalances in how the body moves and heals.
If you were thinking that OA is an inevitable side effect of aging, that’s a limiting belief that you should get rid of quickly. Many people live into their 80s, 90s, and beyond without experiencing OA. OA is just one more thing you can’t blame on your age. Keep reading to find out what the real culprits of OA are and how to handle them.
Disturbing Fact
Perhaps the most disturbing fact about OA is that the numbers of people who suffer from it are on the rise. Between an aging population and increasing obesity rates, greater numbers are at risk. Women age 50 and over, in particular, are most likely to develop OA as well as athletes and those with repetitive stress injuries or a history of joint trauma.
Unfortunately, for many OA means more than just aches and pains. Too many people with OA are having their daily lives impacted, Their independence limited, and ultimately their emotional health affected. But that doesn’t have to be the case.
With chiropractic care, living your 100 Year LifestyleⓇ, and a proactive approach, osteoarthritis won’t keep you from living an active, vibrant life at any age.
Chiropractic Care
Chiropractic care on a consistent schedule offers people with OA a non-invasive, drug-free approach to managing their health that focuses on restoring function, reducing nerve pressure, improving alignment, and enhancing overall mobility.
Through specific spinal adjustments, spinal decompression, and targeted therapies, chiropractors help reduce joint stress and support the body’s natural healing processes that lead to regeneration.
Unlike allopathic medicine which masks pain with pharmaceuticals or merely waits for degeneration to worsen, chiropractic care addresses the root causes of imbalance and dysfunction. By improving posture, joint motion, and nervous system communication, it supports better biomechanics, which can slow the progression of osteoarthritis and dramatically improve quality of life. For people committed to a proactive, longevity-focused lifestyle, chiropractic care is an essential part of living well with osteoarthritis.
Pain, Soreness, or Injury?
Not all pain is created equal. Osteoarthritis involves soreness, stiffness, and achiness. It’s not an injury. In order to truly understand why chiropractic care is so effective in treating OA, here’s what you need to know:
- Soreness is usually a sign of use, lack of use, or imbalance. Soreness is not harm.
- Injury exists when there is a sharp, worsening pain. Injury involves tissue damage.
The common mistake people make, often at the direction of their medical doctors, is in treating soreness like injury. Soreness doesn’t require long periods of rest. And most importantly, it doesn’t require medication.
What’s Causing the Degeneration?
So, if age isn’t the reason for this degeneration, what is? Here are the most likely culprits. Many people can check at least one, and in many cases all, of these boxes.
- Old Injuries (especially growth plate injuries)
- Repetitive Use Without Balance
- Misalignment
- Lack of Motion
- Toxins, Poor Diet, and Chronic Inflammation
- Obesity and Sedentary Lifestyle
- Untreated, uncorrected spinal subluxations and misalignments
An important point to make here is if you’ve been to your doctor and they are prescribing any, or worse, multiple medications, they might be masking your symptoms, but they definitely aren’t addressing any of the root causes listed above. Taking these medications for the long-term can actually increase your risk of a fall, affect your digestion and nutrient absorption, and actually accelerate your functional decline. And it goes without saying that they won’t put you on the path to regeneration.
If surgery has been suggested, you need to put the brakes on and keep reading.
Regeneration Is Possible
Break a bone and it heals, at any age. The formation of new bone is a natural remodeling process called osteogenesis and as long as you are alive it is constantly happening. Bones will constantly remodel themselves along the lines of greatest stress. We all know that gravity is relentless, but so is the human body. It is always adapting.
In our bodies we have both osteoblasts or bone forming cells and osteoclasts which are cells that break down bone tissue. They are both essential for maintaining bone health. Osteoblasts create new bone tissue for bone growth, repair, and regeneration. Osteoclasts remove the old or damaged bone tissue, literally making space for that regeneration to take place.
It’s your daily habits, what you do on a daily basis, which determine which cells come out on top.
Add it all together and you can see that osteoarthritis doesn’t have to mean an inevitable decline. If you focus on prevention, function, and regenerative care, you can maintain a high quality of life with mobility and independence. Your body is built to heal, if you support it with the right tools in the right way. OA is not fate, and it’s not irreversible.
Check back next week for Part II of this article, or sign up for our newsletter so you never miss the information you need to live at 100% for 100 years…or more.
The post Living Vibrantly with Osteoarthritis – Part 1 appeared first on The 100 Year Lifestyle®.
