Got it mainly in the kneecaps, noticed crunching sounds when I was 25, with 35 it started to get in the way of the little sports I do, longer walks, and doing anything in a squatting position. Have refused medication so far.
didn’t work: Knee braces of any kind - I’ve got big thighs, and the brace just will just work itself down within minutes. Also, they just push my kneecap in a position where it hurts even more. Also, doctors kept prescribing me arch supports for my flat feet, but they seem to make things worse.
unsure about: doctors keep telling me I should keep bicycling and swimming, but sometimes it seems to get temporarily worse after that. Also I lost a quarter of my weight, but I haven’t really noticed a slowdown in the knee’s deterioration.
seems to work: I wear only running shoes with heel support now, these lessen the impact on the knee partially caused by my flat foot, with noticeable positive effect.
There seems to be the possibility of a transplant of your own cartilage, they take some of your cells, let them multiply in the lab, then inject them. But it seems to work only with certain forms of arthritis, I still have to find out if it’s applicable for me.
Bottom line: orthopaedic issues seem to vary greatly, even if two people have arthritis in the same place, there seems to be a variety of possible causes and treatments that may or may not work for them individually.
I had pain in all my joints and many of my bones and my family practitioner told me it was early onset osteoarthritis. So I went to another physician. He said the exact same thing.
Fast forward a half dozen years or so, I got rolfed (for other reasons). Poof! No more arthritis. The rolfing was sufficiently painful that we joked that I’d just got all the suffering over with at once.
Several decades later, still no arthritis. The problem I had (which is not necessarily the problem other people have) was almost certainly accumulated blunt trauma damage, from multiple car wrecks, full contact combat sports, and just generally a lifetime of treating my body as disposable. It was not really osteoarthritis at all… but physicians could not tell the difference.
I’ve always wondered how many people are unnecessarily suffering because they believe unquestioningly in mainstream corporate medicine, and aren’t willing to experiment with alternative therapies. I mean sure, some folks are going to have intractable conditions, but if they never try any experiments (like acupuncture or rolfing or whatever goofy thing the California crystal people are doing now) how can they possibly know?
Thanks for the post. I’m 28 and have had crackling knees for several years now, so it’s good to hear how things might go.
My case: loose ligaments led to a whole bunch of knee dislocations in my teens. Cycling daily stops that happening again, but I just don’t know how long they’ll keep working.
Heather, so happy you’re enjoying your brace and that it has been helping you. I work for BetterBraces.com which is the official online distributor of DonJoy braces from DJO Global as you’ll see noted here: https://www.djoglobal.com/our-brands/donjoy. I just wanted to let everyone here who has been dealing with OA know that we have many solutions for Osteoarthritis. Knee pain sucks. Check them out here: http://www.betterbraces.com/knee-braces/arthritis-knee-braces, you’ll see the DonJoy OA Lite you mentioned as well as one of our newer braces, the DonJoy OA Reaction Web which uses a patented webbing technology to help disperse pain. It’s lightweight and low-profile, great for everyday activities. Our goal is to keep everyone moving and continuing to do the things you love to do.
Do you have stretch marks on your legs from teen growth spurts? Or the characteristic lump? In my case (and my son’s, and my father’s) the lump was not painful.
Ah! To be young again, and only need aspirin or aleve for pain relief…
Yep, 55 years old with ancient knees (both knees are rubbish), osteoarthritis combined with fibromyalgia just to make sure I really feel the pain. The knees are the worst, although hands and feet aren’t that far behind.
I am not a candidate for knee replacement. I am a candidate for cartilage replacement. Since I don’t have big bucks to have them scrape out some of what I have left to grow some more in a lab (using stem cells, I’ve heard) and get that surgically implanted, my doctor and insurance company agreed on the synthetic gel shots.
They are like a miracle cure, but only for 3 months (in my case). Now, to get the insurance to agree to more than one treatment a year… sigh. Until that happens, movement and getting fit are a priority, and this particular brace model has been helpful. The sleeves you’re supposed to wear with them hurt me, so I just wear them over leggings or tights and I look like I have superhero knees. http://www.betterbraces.com/media/catalog/product/cache/1/image/400x400/9df78eab33525d08d6e5fb8d27136e95/d/o/donjoy-reaction-knee-brace-gray.jpg
…well, I may have just been correctly diagnosed in a comment thread. The photo on that wiki page looks exactly like my knees.
Mine are non-painful, I always just assumed it was one of those little differences between people - and I’m a bit over 2m tall so stretchmarks are pretty much expected.
BoingBoing bbs: Where other people somehow know more about your body than you do.
