Is there a non-surgical alternative to knee replacement that addresses the cause and offers only beneficial side effects?
The largest study in history of the health effects of being overweight, analyzing data from more than 50 million people from nearly 200 countries, found that excess body weight is responsible for the premature deaths of approximately four million people each year. Most of those deaths came from heart disease, but the researchers “found conclusive or probable evidence” linking obesity to 20 different disorders—a veritable alphabet soup of potential health concerns.
In the ABCs of the health consequences of obesity, A it’s for arthritis. Obesity can brand rheumatoid arthritis worse and increase the risk of another inflammatory disease of the joints — gout, the so-called disease of kings. However, the most common joint disease in the world, it is osteoarthritis and obesity can it is the ‘major modifiable risk factor’.
Osteoarthritis develops when the cartilage that lines and protects our joints breaks down faster than our bodies can rebuild it. Our knee is the most commonly affected joint, Mr on the hypothesis that the association with obesity was simply due to excessive wear and tear from the added load on the joints. But non-weight-bearing joints such as our hands and wrists can also be affected, suggesting the connection is not “purely mechanical”. Obesity-related dyslipidemia can game role, with increases in the amounts of triglycerides, fat and cholesterol in the blood aggravating Inflammation in the joints, just like cholesterol can worsen inflammation in the walls of our arteries.
Osteoarthritis sufferers not only have higher blood cholesterol levels, but also have inside their joints as you can see below and at 1:52 in my video The best knee replacement alternative for treating osteoarthritisin aspirated synovial fluid and also I establish in the cartilage itself.
When cholesterol is it was dripping in human cartilage in a petri dish, inflammatory degeneration is exacerbated, which helps explain because the higher our cholesterol, the worse our disease, as shown below and at 2:05.
Cholesterol-lowering statin drugs may help prevent and also treat osteoarthritis, such as box a cholesterol-lowering diet. In fact, a fairly healthy plant-based diet can offering the best of both worlds, lowering cholesterol as much as a starting dose of a statin drug—within a week—and having only good side effects, such as lowering blood pressure and facilitating weight loss.
Even losing just about a pound a year for a decade can reduce your chances of developing osteoarthritis by more than 50 percent. Weight reduction can even avoid the need for knee replacement surgery. Osteoarthritis sufferers with obesity who were randomized to lose weight improved their knee function as much as those who underwent surgery—and they did so in just eight weeks. The researchers concluded that losing 20 pounds of fat “could be considered an alternative to knee replacement.”
But isn’t it easier to replace your knees than to lose 20 pounds? Rarely discussed is the fact that nearly 1 in 200 knee replacement patients lose their lives within 90 days of surgery. Given the extreme popularity of this surgery—some 700,000 are performed each year in the United States—one editor of an orthopedic journal suggested that “people considering this operation are not sufficiently attuned to the possibility that it will kill them.” Arguably, this is the most important fact to share with a patient considering surgery. Asked whether patients should be told that the operation could kill them, one orthopedic surgeon said: “To me, the real question is whether this knowledge will help the patient. Will it add to the anxiety of the already anxious patient, perhaps to the point of denying that patient a useful procedure? Or will this knowledge motivate a less disabled patient to follow a diet and exercise program? Ultimately, then, the question comes down to the judgment of the surgeon.”
Even in the vast majority who survive surgery, about one in five knee replacement patients describe is not satisfied with the result. Losing weight with a healthy diet, on the other hand, can offering a non-surgical alternative that treats the cause and has only beneficial side effects.
I continue the obesity alphabet with subsequent videos in the related posts below.
You might be interested in my weight loss book, How not to dietand his partner, The How Not To Diet Cookbookwhich is full of health-promoting Green-Light recipes. Ask for them from your local library.
For more on joint health, visit the topic page.
