Eat Healthy Foods and Exercise to Improve Knee Pain from Osteoarthritis

It’s hard to exercise when your knees hurt from osteoarthritis. But when you don’t exercise, you run the risk of gaining weight, which can make knee pain even worse.

A new study in the Sept. 25 issue of JAMA offers a possible solution. It suggests that some people might benefit by combining two strategies at the same time: eating healthier food to lose weight and exercising regularly.

“Osteoarthritis (OA) is the leading cause of chronic disability among older adults,” according to background information in the article. “Knee OA is the most frequent cause of mobility dependency and diminished quality of life, and obesity is a major risk factor for knee OA. Current treatments for knee OA are inadequate; of patients treated pharmacologically, only about half experience a 30 percent pain reduction, usually without improved function.”

Researchers set out to examine whether losing 10 percent in body weight, with or without exercise, would “reduce joint loading and inflammation and improve clinical outcomes more than exercise alone,” according to a news release from The JAMA Network Journals.

After following nearly 400 people – all of them overweight or obese with pain and radiographic knee osteoarthritis – the researchers determined that people lost more weight when they combined diet and exercise than when they changed their eating habits alone.

And those who exercised and ate fewer calories also had less knee pain, better function, faster walking speed and better physical health-related quality of life compared to those who strictly worked out without changing their diet.

“Osteoarthritis and other obesity-related diseases place an enormous physical and financial burden on the U.S. health care system,” the authors wrote. “The estimated 97 million overweight and obese Americans are at substantially higher risk for many life-threatening and disabling diseases, including OA. The findings from [this trial] suggest that intensive weight loss may have both anti-inflammatory and biomechanical benefits; when combining weight loss with exercise, patients can safety achieve a mean long-term weight loss of more than 10 percent, with an associated improvement in symptoms greater than with either intervention alone.”

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+ Whether you’re an athlete, an expectant mother, or a post-operative patient, massage therapy can help relieve stress, decrease muscle tension and stimulates the release of endorphins that work as your body’s natural painkiller.