Arthritis & Joint Replacement Clinic
C-21, 4th Floor, Yugadharm Complex,
Opposite ICICI Bank, Near Hotel Centre Point,
Ramdaspeth, Nagpur 10, MS, INDIA
A few years ago, about 300,000 knee replacements were performed a year. The number is now a half-million and rising. What is fueling the big boom? A common condition with baby boomers.
"I wouldn't trade this mobility for the world," says Ramona West, a knee replacement patient.
West is moving through life on two artificial knees. She is one of a growing number of baby boomers opting for replacement surgery earlier in life.
"Why make somebody wait until they're 65 when they can have an extra 10 or 15 years of being able to walk?" says West.
In 10 years, there could be as many as 3.2 million annual knee replacement surgeries.
"Replacing of a knee is really resurfacing the knee. We don't cut out the knee joint, we really resurface a few millimeters or take off a very few millimeters of the damaged cartilage and bone and cap the end," says Dr. Ed Humbert, an orthopedic surgeon on the medical staff of Lee Memorial Health System.
The big boom in business lies within this generation's demand to keep an active lifestyle, despite their failing joints. The number one thing standing in their way is arthritis.
"Arthritis is usually a chronic condition that is treated as conservative as possible but over time but when get to the point where the simple injections or the anti-inflammatories don't help, that's when you consider doing a surgical intervention," says Dr. Humbert.
"The arthritis kicked in when I was 40, and by the time I was in my early fifties, I had nothing, no cartilage left. It was bone on bone and I was like walking like this," says West.
Degenerative or osteoarthritis is also on the rise, due in part to our increased weight, both serving to stress out joints.
"Twenty-25 years ago, very few people would attempt to do younger joint replacements. Nowadays people are demanding a little bit higher levels of care," says Dr. Humbert.
So these artificial joints are taking some of the pain out of growing old.
A GENTLE stroll every day could save your life by protecting against a host of chronic killer diseases, experts say.
Just a little light exercise can stave off heart failure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes and even Alzheimer's.
And it is never too late to start. Stepping up exercise in your 50s can have major long-term benefits, the study found.
People who increased their fitness by just 20 per cent in middle age lowered their chances of developing the chronic diseases even decades later by 20 per cent.
In fact, introducing a gentle walk, housework, gardening or DIY into your daily routine from the age of 50 can slash the risk of developing these deadly illnesses at 65.
Researchers assessed the fitness levels of people in midlife and then followed them up 26 years later. The people who were fittest originally went on to have the lowest incidence of chronic health conditions, such as heart disease and stroke.
Researchers at UT Southwestern Medical Centre in Dallas, Texas, studied data of 14,726 healthy men and 3,944 healthy woman with an average age of 49 who were enrolled in the Cooper Centre Longitudinal Study, which contains more than 250,000 medical records from over 40 years.
Then they examined the patients' Medicare health claims from aged 70 to 85 and looked for evidence of eight chronic conditions - heart failure, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer's disease, and colon or lung cancer.
Patients with the highest level of midlife fitness had a lower incidence of the chronic conditions compared with the people with the lowest midlife fitness.
The researchers, whose study is published online in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine, measured fitness in Mets, short for metabolic equivalent of task, a measure of energy expenditure.
Eating foods such as spinach that are rich in magnesium could ease knee pain, suggests a new US study.
It found that people with high levels of magnesium in their diet are less likely to have osteoarthritis of the knee.
Scientists from the University of North Carolina scanned the knees of more than 2,000 patients and found those who ate the highest amount of the nutrient were half as likely to have evidence of arthritis.
One in ten people in the UK over 65 are thought to have a major disability due to osteoarthritis, in most cases in the hips or knees.
It is thought that magnesium strengthens bone and cartilage - around half of the mineral in the body is found in bone - and experts believe it aids calcium metabolism, which is crucial for bone-building.
Green vegetables are good sources of magnesium because the chlorophyll molecule, which gives the green colour, is rich in it. Other sources include beans, peas and nuts.
More weight puts more pressure on your joints, and extra body fat increases inflammation in the body. Inflammation is associated with both osteoarthritis (when the cartilage between the bones at your joint wears away) and inflammatory arthritis (arthritis is marked by swollen, warm joints).
Plan Your Diet Around Inflammation-Fighting Foods
Choosing the right foods to add to your diet and getting some exercise can actually help reduce inflammation, bringing relief from arthritis symptoms while you lose weight.
Here is what to put on your plate:
Fish - particularly fish high in omega-3 fatty acids - can help with joint stiffness and pain. Experts recommend eating at least 12 ounces of fish a week. Salmon has the highest amounts of omega-3 fats, but t other great choices: canned light tuna (instead of albacore tuna that has a higher mercury content), herring, sardines, codfish, and tilapia.
Exercise to Ease Your Joints - important for weight loss and arthritis:
Go for gentle movements and exercise that is gentle on joints. A physical therapist can give you exercises that will help avoid putting too much pressure on arthritic joints. Swimming is also a great activity for people with arthritis.
Do some resistance training - lift weights, use resistance machines at the gym, or use elastic bands as part of your exercise routine. This type of exercise builds muscle, improves balance, and keeps your active.
Strike a yoga pose - yoga is perfectly suited for people with stiff, painful joints.
Most forms of arthritis cause pain and swelling in your joints, places where two bones meet such as your knee or elbow.
Usually arthritis affects older people, like my mother-in-law in her 70s whose pain got so bad she eventually had hip replacement surgery. Now she is active and pain-free. That is typically osteoarthritis, which breaks down the cartilage in your joints.
But there is another type - rheumatoid arthritis or RA - and it can affect people when they are much younger, including young adults, teenagers and even children.
In RA, instead of cartilage around joints being worn down and causing pain, your own immune system is causing swelling and pain. Your immune cells are attacking your own body.
That's why RA is considered an "autoimmune" condition. Right now, it is a lifelong condition once it develops.