Osteoarthritis is often called “wear and tear” arthritis. It results from the natural—and sometimes excessive—use of your body. While you cannot do anything to completely prevent wear and tear in your spine, knees, hips, ankles and other joints, you can help to slow the process through regular chiropractic care. You can also get some significant relief from the pain and stiffness that comes from osteoarthritis by getting your back and other joints adjusted.
Osteoarthritis is a condition that responds quite well to chiropractic. If you are currently suffering from osteoarthritis, or know someone who is, please consider chiropractic to relieve pain and improve mobility.
What is Osteoarthritis?
The term “arthritis” refers to the inflammation of a joint. There are actually several hundred types of arthritis. Osteoarthritis—the most common type of arthritis—is a degenerative joint disease that many, many people are affected by, especially older adults. It is one of the main conditions that lead to the ongoing pain and loss of mobility that is so often associated with old age.
Osteoarthritis is so common because wear and tear on the human body are inevitable. Your body wears down as you use it. In your younger years much of this wear is repaired, only to be worn down again, and then repaired again. But when you get older, your body slows down on the repairs. Cartilage starts to disappear as we get older as well. When the cartilage no longer protects your bones from one another, bone rubs on bone, inflammation occurs, spurs often result and pain is inevitable.
How Chiropractic Helps with Osteoarthritis
The specialties of chiropractic—reducing inflammation, decreasing pain and increasing joint mobility—are an ideal fit for treating osteoarthritis. All of the symptoms that you experience with osteoarthritis are made better through regular chiropractic adjustments and associated therapies. You also get the added benefit of improving your movement patterns, which can help avoid further damage to your joints.
Some of the benefits of chiropractic for osteoarthritis include:
Reducing Inflammation
Inflammation is one of the big enemies of your joints. It is your body’s response to a stimulus and can be helpful from time to time—but not hour after hour, day after day, week after week. Ongoing inflammation causes damage that you want to avoid and makes everything more painful.
Chiropractic can help your body reduce inflammation by returning your joints to their proper alignment. Properly aligned joints experience improved circulation, which aids in healing. The joints are less likely to become inflamed as well as long as they are in proper alignment.
Decreasing Pain
Often the pain you experience in your joints is due to pressure being put on nerves. For instance, when your spine is misaligned the vertebrae can press on spinal nerves, leading to extreme discomfort, shooting pains, burning sensations, numbness, tingling and other symptoms. Some patients are surprised at how much less pain they experience after just a single adjustment. Once the pressure is removed from the nerve pain is reduced significantly.
Increasing Joint Mobility
Stiffness is a well-known problem with osteoarthritis. The stiffness is caused by several factors, including the loss of cartilage in the joint and the lack of movement that results from pain in the joint. The less you move, the harder it becomes to start moving again.
Adjustments gently increase the range of motion in your joint. Over time, these adjustments can cause significant increases in your range of motion and comfort with movement.
Get Relief from Osteoarthritis
If you are suffering from osteoarthritis, please contact us. Our chiropractic team is ready to get you the relief you deserve.
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