LATEST MOAN FROM YOU AND ME - 2022

He's aiming at a general modern audience, not you specifically Pete

The point is that most people, when they get joint pain, rest it because that's what we've all been told. It was even 'official' advice for a lot of years. This guy is explaining why resting it just makes it worse over time, and simple exercises slowly building the strength and mobility back.

Here's something I learned when I knackered my knees a few years ago and had to rehabilitate them. Our joints have no blood supply. We all know how the heart pumps blood all round the body to keep all our bits nourished. Well not inside our joints. Instead our joints are nourished by synovial fluid, mostly water with nutrients in. Nothing pumps that fluid around, so if we don't move, it just settles in the bottom of the joint, and everything else becomes dehydrated. It is only movement that squishes it all around, nourishing and hydrating the cartilage. This guy doesn't explain it like that, but in layman's terms tries to explain that simple exercises help keep the blood flowing to the area and keep everything loose.

 

OK, sorry I thought you put it up in answer to me.

As far as I know the official advice for Arthritic joints has always been to keep the joint moving and dont let them get stuck.
The surgeon even told me that the new knee will still form the lubricant even though some of the bone has been taken away, so keep it moving he said.

When you can feel the bones grinding because the cartilage has worn away is when it gets difficult to keep it moving.
I've seen people a lot worse than me and exercising is the last thing they need.

 

My personal experience is likely unique to me, so I'll share this but please don't take it as advice, because my case is completely different to yours, but if you can get something useful out of it, great.

On my right foot, as a result of a terrible training accident, my first metatarsal (the joint that connects the big toe to the rest of your foot) is carnage. Both halves of the joint are destroyed. The X ray looks like broken glass. In the impact, one surface just sort of imploded, instead of being a nice ball shape it's now caved in. The other side exploded, with a fragment of the joint surface rotating and has now set in completely the wrong position.

For ages I rested it as advised. It was so painful I genuinely seriously considered getting drunk then smashing it off with a hammer and chisel to prompt the NHS into amputating the remains. I even got special custom insoles designed to take all the pressure off that joint. Nothing helped and it got more and more painful over time.

Then one day I tried a different approach. With VERY limited range of motion, I worked on building the muscles up around the area. The pain lessened. Don't get me wrong, it will never be right, and I've had to adapt a lot. In my martial arts training every time I get a new instructor I find myself having to explain why I can't do the footwork exactly as he says but I find adaptations that work nearly as good. But I can walk and run and train martial arts largely without pain. That said, someone accidentally stood on my foot in training a few weeks ago and it knacked for ages.

You can't cure osteoarthritis, but in my case binning the advice to rest and keep pressure off it, and instead making SLOW but active efforts to use it as much as possible has paid dividends. By slow, I mean no sudden load, just slowly put it under load and slow move through the limited range of motion I have left in that joint. Slow, so that I can immediately stop as soon as I feel connective tissue being crushed between the now massively deformed halves of the joint.

 

This is something I do very frequently! I don't remember having read about it anywhere or anybody telling me - it's something that has just come naturally to me!
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