Recently there has been some mention of sore hips, knees, aging joints etc.  and what follows is nothing more than my opinion based on my own experiences.

I had a massive medial meniscus cartilage tear at age 21 from simply stepping up onto a table. No scope procedures were being done yet, so they opened it up and removed what they felt was needed. Mistake #1   Hospitalized for 5 days and walked with a noticeable limp for the next 30 years. Mistake #2

In those days you typically had to be 70 plus years old to have a replacement because the life of the mechanical joint was either short or unknown.  They always worried about how many “revisions” could be done within the patient’s lifespan.

That has all changed.  I had the knee with previously torn cartilage replaced at age 52, mostly because the Doc pointed out the ongoing damage occurring to both hips from the fouled up gait I had developed over 3 decades.  Now they can replace the sacrificial polyethylene puck within the new joint and complete revisions can be done several times, so they are willing to do them at much younger ages.  Now at 60 my hips no longer bother me unless I have really abused them.

Most of us are inclined to wait as long as we can and keep using the original equipment until utter failure occurs.  I believe that is a mistake because of the collateral damage to other joints involved in walking.  I also had two joints replaced in my feet because I was too stubborn to have a lesser preventative surgery at an earlier date. Mistake #3

Steroid injections twice per year 2 weeks out from canoe trips  bought me some time for several years and Hyaluronic Acid injections work well for some people, but all are just stop-gap measures.

As to the use of exercise to help the joint pain, it absolutely does help because if the attending muscles are strong the joint is more stable and less likely to “give out” unexpectedly.  The joint replacement physicians will always recommend months of exercise to build the muscles up prior to surgery to shorten rehab.  The majority of rehab is nothing more than forcing flexibility back in the joint AHEAD of the scar tissue that WILL develop. It is always unpleasant, more so if you do not get right after it.

Standard disclaimer here.  My opinions are for entertainment purposes only and not to be construed as medical advice.

Consult your own physician, but do it sooner rather than later.

MossBack