1, the old cold leg is the disease of the elderly
It is true that the elderly have a relatively high likelihood of suffering from old cold legs (medically known as osteoarthrosis), but this disease is not irrelevant to young people. Especially some young women, late autumn is still short skirts, although beautiful but “freezing”, the old cold legs will actively find the door. According to reports, in early December last year, Shanghai rainy low temperature, many young girls in the hospital’s orthopedic outpatient queue. Their common symptom is: leg soreness, swelling and pain and heavy feeling, the doctor said this is the precursor of the old cold leg. So here to remind those who love beauty, but ignore the health of women, must pay attention to warmth and proper exercise, do not let the old cold legs for a moment of beauty.
2, more exercise good to wear down the bone spurs
The old cold leg is a chronic disease, moderate physical exercise can prevent muscle atrophy, enhance the strength of the leg muscles. Such as jogging and doing gymnastics, the amount of activity to the body comfortable, slightly sweating as the degree, and it is important to persevere. The main symptom of the old cold leg, most of the knee pain, so some patients target the exercise of the knee, often half squatting posture for the knee joint back and forth rocking action, or repeatedly bending the knee mass activities, climbing mountains, etc., “determined” to wear down the hyperplasia of the bone flab. In fact, this is not scientific, because the knee joint is under the most pressure when half-squatting, shaking, heavy sports activities, climbing, etc., but increased wear and tear, resulting in increased pain. Patients should use drugs, joint injections, arthroscopy and other methods to treat knee pain under the guidance of an arthroscopist at a regular hospital, and do the right amount of exercise under the guidance of a doctor.
3. Blindly treat rheumatic diseases
Because many rheumatic diseases have joint pain, so patients often subjectively believe that as long as there is joint pain is rheumatic disease before the diagnosis, according to rheumatic disease to seek medical treatment everywhere. Osteoarthritis is often treated according to rheumatoid arthritis. He was an elderly man from Sichuan who had pain in the small joints of both hands for decades, and the joints were gradually enlarged and deformed. He sought medical help everywhere and was treated for a long time for rheumatoid arthritis, to no avail. It turned out that the old man was a pickle factory worker, due to the low degree of mechanization of the factory, pickles need to be manually operated, so a few decades of work, eventually due to overwork caused joint wear. Later he checked the rheumatoid factor, which was negative; he also took X-rays of both hands, which were consistent with the changes of osteoarthritis, and was finally diagnosed with osteoarthritis. If this patient continues to be treated for rheumatoid arthritis, the disease will be added to the disease. Because the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is long-term, patients need to apply non-hormonal anti-inflammatory drugs to relieve pain, as well as drugs to control the disease. These drugs, in addition to the curative effect, there are many adverse reactions, such as the impact on the blood system, the liver, kidney toxic effects.
4, blindly take “softening bone spurs” drugs
Many patients tend to seek medical help in order to relieve their pain, and look for drugs to eliminate bone spurs everywhere. As mentioned above, a bone spur is an enlarged bone, which is the result of the degeneration of joint cartilage, so it is also a bone. How can bones be eliminated by medication? There can be no such miracle drug in the world. Imagine if there was a drug that could dissolve bone, what serious adverse effects would this drug bring to the body? Therefore, the ability of drugs to soften bone spurs is completely misleading and must not be believed.
5. Weight is irrelevant in the treatment
Weight loss, reducing joint damage and weight bearing, plays a very important role in the treatment of osteoarthritis, but this is rarely recognized.
As early as the 1930s, it was noted that obese people had a tendency to develop osteoarthritis, and foreign literature reported that the incidence of osteoarthritis in obese patients was 12% to 43%. Some people collected material from patients with osteoarthritis more than 30 years before the lesion occurred and found that men who were 20% over the standard weight at age 37 had a 1.5 times higher risk of developing osteoarthritis than standard weight people, while women had a 2.1 times higher risk. Over the next 36 years, the risk of developing severe knee osteoarthritis increased to 1.9 times higher in men and 3.2 times higher in women, and knee osteoarthritis occurred in 60% of overweight individuals.
It has also been reported that because weight or load is mainly concentrated on the medial cartilage of the knee joint, which happens to be the common site of knee osteoarthritis in most obese people, suggesting that obesity may be a more important risk factor for severe joint osteoarthritis of the knee. For overweight individuals, particular attention should be paid to the role of weight loss in the treatment of osteoarthritis. Some studies suggest that a 5 kg weight reduction in 10 years can reduce the incidence of osteoarthritis of the knee by 50%.
6. Related treatment is optional
Patients often focus only on medication and ignore the important role of related issues in the treatment of osteoarthritis.
(1) medical physical exercise: to carry out relevant muscle exercise, so that muscle movement coordination and muscle strength, can reduce joint symptoms, enhance the strength and endurance around the joints and increase the stability of the joints, maintain and increase the range of joint movement and improve the ability of daily activities, which is conducive to the recovery of the disease and disease control.
(2) The role of society and family: when seriously ill patients receive care, understanding, support and help from society and family, their condition can be relieved.
(3) Physiotherapy: Physiotherapy plays an important role in the treatment of osteoarthritis, especially for those whose symptoms cannot be relieved by drugs or who cannot tolerate drugs, physiotherapy is a better means of treatment. It helps to strengthen the patient’s muscle strength and improve the range of motion. In the acute stage, physiotherapy is mainly to relieve pain and swelling; in the chronic stage, it is mainly to enhance local blood circulation and improve joint function.
(4) Protection of damaged joints: Special attention should be paid to avoid mechanical damage to the joints and minimize weight and wear on the joints. For example, patients with osteoarthritis of the knee and ankle joints should try to avoid more strenuous exercises that can damage the joints, such as going up and down stairs, prolonged squatting, standing, kneeling and climbing and long-distance trekking, especially when the joints are swollen. In order to achieve the purpose of exercise, patients can choose to swim, bicycle, do gymnastics and other exercises with lighter weight on the joints, and also use handles, canes, knee pads, walkers, wedge insoles or other auxiliary facilities to assist joint movement.
(5) Wearing shoes is also a matter of concern: appropriate shoes should be worn, in fact, wearing flat shoes, is not the best choice. Because when walking in flat shoes, the weight will be too much pressure on the heel, walking for a long time, the impulse of uploading may cause pain and discomfort in the heel, ankle, knee, hip, waist and other parts of the body, a long time on the joint adverse effects can appear the performance of osteoarthritis, and sometimes headaches, dizziness, etc.. Moreover, due to the decline in the cushioning effect of the arch, it is very easy to cause fractures when the foot force is improper. So it is best to wear soft, flexible shoes, such as air-cushioned casual shoes, which can reduce the impact of gravity on the joints and reduce the wear and tear on the joints. In addition, the heel of the shoe should not be too high, about 2 cm above the forefoot of the sole is appropriate, do not wear high heels. Since the elderly are the most prevalent group of osteoarthritis, so in addition to paying attention to the height of the heel, the soles of shoes for the elderly should be slightly wider and must also have anti-slip ripples to avoid falls.
7, osteoarthritis can lead to paralysis after surgery
Often many elderly patients with osteoarthritis are afraid of surgery, thinking that the knee surgery will lead to paralysis, once the diagnosis of osteoarthritis, there is no medical ability to reverse the condition of osteoarthritis, most patients will continue to develop the disease, if the disease has reached a certain level, there is cartilage exfoliation, drug conservative treatment is ineffective, severe pain or joint function is affected, there are free If the disease reaches a certain level, with cartilage exfoliation, if conservative medication is ineffective, if pain is severe or joint function is affected, and if there are free bodies in the joint, arthroscopic surgery is required. However, if the patient blindly refuses surgery, the condition is often delayed and the only solution is joint replacement. Currently, arthroscopic surgery techniques and equipment have been perfected, making it possible to increase the postoperative results of arthroscopic surgery treatment without cutting into the joint, with less trauma and better results, and with faster recovery of the patient’s knee function after surgery.