Osteoarthritic pain: Exercise or placebo injections, which is better?

😬Some won't be happy to read this, but exercise doesn't seem to be more efficient than placebo injections of saline to treat osteoarthritic pain.

💪🏼We know exercise does many other beneficial things for the body, many of which result in improved resilience toward different types of diseases, improved quality of life and extended life expectancy.

💡Protection toward osteoarthritis might be one of those benefits, too. However, treatment of osteoarthritic pain is a different beast.

🦴Once you wore down your cartilage, you lost the buffer between your bones, they start to rub against each other and become inflamed - exercise does not help any more than injections of salty water, according to this big clinical trial.

🤝🏽So, make sure you protect your cartilage and avoid wearing it down unnecessarily.

🧾References

Bandak et al., PMID: 34844929, https://ard.bmj.com/content/81/4/537.long

Sihvonen et al., PMID: 24369076, https://www.nejm.org/doi/10.1056/NEJMoa1305189?url_ver=Z39.88-2003&rfr_id=ori:rid:crossref.org&rfr_dat=cr_pub%20%200www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

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