A recent British study caught my eye. It wasn’t about knees, but diabetes. But there’s a lesson in there for knee pain sufferers, I believe.
Researchers split into two groups 300 people with type 2 diabetes, formerly known as adult-onset diabetes. All were ages 20 to 65 and had been diagnosed with diabetes within six years.
The control group followed regular treatment guidelines.
The second group stopped taking their diabetes drugs and were put on an 825-calorie-a-day diet of shakes and soups for three to five months. After losing weight, they returned to other food and received monthly counseling to keep the pounds off.
Two years later, 36% of those in the second group, but only 3% in the control group, had blood sugar that had fallen out of the diabetes range without taking drugs.
Weight loss turned out to be the critical factor, not surprisingly. Losing weight is a great idea to help with many problems, including knee pain.
But one takeaway I found quite interesting: one of the study’s authors said the results show that type 2 diabetes isn’t an “inevitably progressive disease.”
Osteoarthritis, which is what many knee pain sufferers are diagnosed with, is often portrayed too as an “inevitably progressive disease.” Knee pain in general is similarly thrown into the basket of hopeless causes.
But I think there’s a lot that people with hurting knees and even osteoarthritis can do to arrest the downhill slide, and even begin to get better.
The first thing is to reject the dismal pessimism of the phrase “inevitably progressive disease.” I mean, have you ever heard anything so depressing? There is absolutely no light at the end of that tunnel.
I think there’s ample reason to reject that dour thinking. Some of us with knee pain who were written off have gotten better. And then you have this latest study of people with diabetes, who modified their diet, shed weight, and managed to escape a lifelong regimen of drugs.
Yup, mainstream medicine is way too pessimistic about knee pain. It took 6yrs, but I went from very limited and unhappy with virtually constant knee pain of the same type as Richard had, to now 90% improved, and still improving gradually. The main thing that gives me grief now is where mainstream medicine did intervene & trimmed out 1/3rd of my medial meniscus, which may have ended my running days. But I can still cycle/gym/swim hard and do lots of walking over rough ground.
ReplyDeleteSomebody please explain to me how in the world can knee cartilage under the kneecap ever get better given the tremendous shear forces applied to it day after day and the fact that even if cartilage can heal, it can only do so to a limited extent, but when the damaged spot keeps rubbing again and again onto the opposite surface (say trochlea) how is healing ever possible and how is attrition not progressive and inevitable?
ReplyDeleteHello Pinnochio,
DeleteI seem to recall Richard discussing this in his book. Simplified, it went something like, some people were physically worse off than others and yet did not register pain as expected, and others were better off yet complained of higher levels of pain.
I've been told by a surgeon that I have zero cartilage. He said it three times to make sure I heard it. But I find that I experience greater fluidity in my range of motion and higher comfort levels ,to the point that I simply marvel at times at how normal my knees can feel, after spending a half hour riding my recumbent at level 2.
And then there are the times that my one leg has me limping along. It doesn't make sense, but it can happen nonetheless.