Pillar 2: Control the Pain
How do I reduce my pain? That’s the question you really want answered isn’t it?
The reason many of you are even at this website is because your healthcare provider referred you here. But the reason you went to the doctor in the first place was because of pain. It was for pain you came, and for pain you want answers. Well, that’s what Pillar Two is all about.
Controlling the pain starts with understanding the pain . . .
Usually when we talk about knee osteoarthritis, we toss around terms like inflammation and swelling. The implication is that if we can reduce those we will reduce the pain in the knee. This makes a lot of sense. After all, the word ‘arthritis’ itself means joint inflammation (latin: arth=joint, itis=inflammation). So ice and antiinflammatories, right?
Well, yes and no. The truth is that the pain of osteoarthritis is complicated. OA develops for multiple reasons and the pain is influenced by multiple factors. Yes, the primary pain source in most is the inflammation and the things we do to control inflammation can often help, but there are other factors as well. The diagram to the side gives you a sense of the different variables at play in the development and experience of Knee OA
The truth is out there somewhere . . .
In reality, several factors probably have varying contributions to the pain level depending on the person. One person may have direct coming from the nerves in the bone beneath the worn-out cartilage. Someone else might have pain from chemical irritation of swelling in the joint. Another might have ‘peripheral sensitization’, a condition where nerve have that has become hyper-sensitive around the joint. And still another may have little or no pain at all despite extensive damage on their x-rays. The truth is, it is sometimes hard for you to know for sure.
Short-term versus long-term pain relief
In this chapter, we are primarily focussed on things that can relieve your pain almost immediately. However, effective Knee OA management, will require more than short term treatments for pain. The most effective long term solutions for Knee Osteoarthritis involve reducing the load through the joint, and strengthening the knee. That is why these are separate pillars of our approach, and will be addressed in chapters of their own. It is the combination of using the short-term relief treatments as needed, and the long term lifestyle strategies that make for the best Knee Osteoarthritis management.