Each year, Bone and Joint Action Week takes place October 12th through the 20th. It’s a week focused on raising awareness about prevention, treatment and management of bone and joint conditions, and highlighting why bone and joint health is important.
Taking care of our bone and joint health keeps us mobile, making all the other areas of our lives easier—whether that’s doing activities we enjoy, playing with our kids and grandkids or just getting around more easily and staying comfortable.
“The more we are able to stay active and engage in activities or exercise that we enjoy,” says Nasser Ayyad, D.O., assistant professor of clinical rehabilitation medicine at Weill Cornell Medical College, “the better off we’ll be in terms of our overall health and our joint and bone health.”
Bone and joint pain happens for many reasons—it could be caused by injury, it could be a symptom of certain diseases or it could even be due to allergic reactions.
Common bone and joint conditions include:
The condition that Dr. Ayyad sees most often in his practice is osteoarthritis, a condition that affects more than 32 million Americans each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Osteoarthritis is by far the most common type of arthritis,” Dr. Ayyad says. “It can damage almost any joint. I would say the top three are the hands, hips and knees.”
While osteoarthritis was once considered a wear and tear disease, where the cartilage in a given joint wore down over time, it is now considered joint failure. The entire joint is being affected and gradually becoming weaker—this includes connective tissue, the joint lining and sometimes even the capsule—and the processes that maintain joint health begin to break down over time and become overwhelmed by low-grade inflammation. This inflammation is what deteriorates the joint.
Certain conditions, like diabetes, can raise your risk for osteoarthritis. Jobs that require manual labor also increase risk, as do lifestyle factors such as weight and diet. However, developing osteoarthritis isn’t something everyone is going to face—it only significantly affects 10% to 20% of the population—and there are ways you can limit its impact on your life.
“The first thing that we can do is remember that motion is lotion throughout life,” Dr. Ayyad says. “The way to help prevent joint problems is by staying active.”
A study looking at runners found that moderate runners (those who run 10 to 15 miles per week, as opposed to a higher amount of 20 to 30) had a decreased incidence of developing knee arthritis later in life when compared to people who are primarily sedentary.
“That doesn’t mean if you’re not a runner you have to start running tomorrow to decrease your chance of developing knee arthritis,” Dr. Ayyad says. “The key is to stay active, and even having a walking routine of 30 to 45 minutes a day is going to decrease your chance of developing knee and joint problems down the line.”
Other ways Dr. Ayyad recommends to prevent problems down the line include:
Fortunately, a wide range of options are available to address bone and joint pain, including more conservative preventive measures and treatment that addresses the pain itself.
“Once we develop joint pain, I would say the first thing we need to do is try to determine provoking factors, and if there are certain activities that are provoking us to have more inflammation and more pain, we need to modify those,” Dr. Ayyad says. “For example, if you’re a runner or you’ve spent a lot of time on your feet maybe you move to the pool for more exercise, or you incorporate biking to decrease certain weight-bearing pressure on certain joints.”
After you’ve modified your activity, further treatment options include:
Stay on top of your bone and joint health by taking your concerns to your orthopedic specialist. Need an orthopedic specialist? Find one today here.