Why do older adults have knee pain when walking?

The human body is like a complex machine, each organ is like a part of the machine, the knee joint is considered to be the human body in the biggest loss of parts, because most of the time in the life of people walking, sports, many times and frequent use, resulting in older people’s knee joints in the state of strain, that is, the medical treatment of osteoarthritis. As the condition progresses, daily activities such as walking up and down steps, going out for a walk, and standing up and sitting down are limited and mobility is restricted. However, the condition does not become serious all at once, but usually develops slowly over a period of years. When patients are asked, “When did the pain start?”, most of them are unable to tell us exactly when it started. Most of the patients who come to our clinic have severe osteoarthritis of the knee. According to X-rays, it is inferred that they have been suffering from the disease for as long as 10-15 years. But when asked, “When did you get the disease?”, they usually answered, “Since five or six years ago”. Such an answer is unique to middle-aged and elderly people, i.e., something that happened quite a long time ago is considered to have happened in the last few years. The reason for this is that at the beginning of the disease, the symptoms were so mild and insignificant that they did not remain in the patient’s memory. The earliest symptom of osteoarthritis of the knee is “stiffness of the knee at the beginning of the morning”, which is felt at the beginning of the morning when walking. This is when you start walking early in the morning, i.e., for 4-5 minutes, for a distance of 100-200 steps or less, and you feel that your knees are hard, heavy, slow, and painful. Or you may feel that the “gears” of the knee are not biting as smoothly as they should. However, this stiffness of the knee is only felt within 4-5 minutes at the beginning of early morning activities, and most people do not feel any discomfort during the day. Most people do not feel any discomfort during the day, so the patient does not care about it. The duration of this phase varies from person to person, from 1-2 months to several years. From time to time the symptoms are relieved, and at other times they appear again. There are also people without this stage, i.e., the following painful conditions occur immediately. The pain is felt when sitting upright, bending the knee, going up and down stairs, going up and down ramps, etc. that require force on the knee. In addition, there is pain when changing movements, such as when you want to sit down after an activity, or when you change from a sitting position to a standing position. This type of pain is the most typical painful symptom of osteoarthritis of the knee. Treatment: 1, you can try to wear soft knee pads, not to keep warm, but to help the knee joint to withstand the load; 2, intra-articular injection of hyaluronic acid, that is, cartilage nutrient solution, lubricate the joints, similar to the rusty chain oil; 3, oral non-steroidal drugs and glucosamine sulfate capsules, to protect the joints; 4, if the conditions permit, it is best to carry out the X-ray of the knee joints and the nuclear magnetic resonance examination, because some patients Joint pain may not be caused by aging alone, but may be combined with meniscus injury, etc.; 5. For patients who do not get good results from the above treatments, knee arthroscopy can be performed to remove the inflammatory factors in the joint cavity and relieve pain.