Longevity Bloomington Newsletter #6 - Osteoarthritis
Research Roundup: All About Osteoarthritis
What is osteoarthritis?
Osteoarthritis (OA) is the degeneration of joint cartilage and the underlying bone at a particular joint.
What causes OA?
The scientific community's understanding of OA is rapidly changing. Historically, OA has been thought to be caused by "wear and tear" over time and to be primarily caused by mechanical forces. Now, new research reveals that OA is a whole body disorder that has a lot of different causes. These include genetic, environmental, hormonal, and metabolic factors that interact and contribute to the start and progression of the disease.
What can I do about it?
We won't spend time discussing risk factors such as genetics or past injuries that are outside of your control. Instead, we will focus on the risk factors that you can change. We are going to focus on two: obesity and physical activity
1. Obesity
There is a strong association between obesity and OA. Being overweight or obese results in excessive joint loading and altered biomechanical patterns.
However, biomechanical theories do not fully explain the link between obesity and OA. New research shows that obesity results in a low-grade inflammatory state in the body (Coelho, 2013). Fat tissue is not just a place to store excess calories. Fat tissue releases a host of inflammatory cells that circulate throughout your body and have wide-ranging effects. This inflammation from fat tissue is a primary cause of OA.
It has been estimated that half of the knee OA cases in the United States would be eliminated if obesity were removed as a risk factor (Muthuri, 2011)!
There is strong evidence that weight loss is an effective treatment for knee OA. Weight loss has been shown to result in less pain, improvement of physical function, mobility, and quality of life (Messier, 2013).
2. Physical Activity
Similar to weight loss, there is strong evidence that resistance training and aerobic exercise reduces pain and improves function in individuals with OA.
Often, when an individual is diagnosed with OA, they are understandably hesitant to exercise as they fear it might make their OA worse.
A study from IUPUI looked at the effect of resistance training on the progression of knee OA in 221 older adults and found that resistance training reduced the progression of OA in the knee (Mikesky, 2006).
A large study out of Norway looked at the effect of exercise on the risk of knee or hip OA for overweight/obese individuals. From their conclusion: "physical exercise does not increase the risk of osteoarthritis at any level of BMI, suggesting that exercise could be encouraged also among individuals with excessive body mass, without concern for an increased risk of osteoarthritis." (Mork, 2012).
So what type of exercise is best for knee OA? In addition to aerobic exercise, multiple studies have supported improving quadriceps strength. Increasing the muscle mass of the thigh improves pain and function in individuals with knee OA (Fransen, 2015). General strengthening exercises also seem to be beneficial as the volume of knee cartilage is directly related to total body muscle mass. When in doubt, get your legs stronger.
Individuals should aim for at least 180 minutes of exercise per week for optimal pain reduction and functional improvement (Kirihara, 2017). If you can't find the time for 180 minutes per week, participate in as much exercise as your schedule allows. Something is better than nothing.
Protein
This is our monthly reminder to get more protein! Protein is very important in maintaining/improving muscle and bone mass. Most adults 50+ are not getting enough!
If you do not know how much protein you get in a day, you can use this helpful food calculator from WebMD: https://www.webmd.com/diet/healthtool-food-calorie-counter. Try to log all of your food for one day. The calculator will then show you how much protein, fat and carbohydrates you had that day. You can then decide if increasing protein in your diet would be helpful.
As reminder, adults 50+ should aim for half their bodyweight in protein. For example, a 150 pound individual should try to get ~ 75 grams of protein per day.
Longevity Update
Our class members from the newly added 12:30 class have done a great job over the last few weeks! They have been working hard to improve their strength and endurance.
New Longevity Members
We have added nine new members to the Longevity family since our last newsletter:
Jan
Dee
Dean
Lisa
Merle
Shelly
Melissa
Karen
Liza
Welcome to the Longevity family, it has been great having you!
The Longevity Crew in Action!
Here is a video from last week of the 11:30 class working on their speed!
https://video.wixstatic.com/video/5c793d_3d0fef54f61545e69c8185db0f58f148/720p/mp4/file.mp4
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