As a person walks, all of his or her body weight is transmitted through a person's ankle. Depending on how fast a person is walking or maybe even jogging multiple times body weight may end up going through the ankle. The ankle joint has articular cartilage just like any other mobile joint. It is prone to arthritis either from simple degenerative wear and tear or maybe more rapidly after a trauma.
The interesting thing to note about arthritis is that as a person ages cartilage continues to be made. Unfortunately the issue is that more cartilage is being lost than is being made by the body. So it's a ratio problem and may lead to substantial pain and suffering.
Here are 5 ways of handling ankle arthritis:
1. Activity avoidance. This basically just means if an activity is painful, then stay away from it. If you are an avid skier, and arthritis in one of your ankles makes it extremely painful to do it or keeps you in bed for a few days after skiing, it may be better to switch to a different activity. Same thing goes for jogging, it may be best to switch over to cycling or swimming.
2. Medications- start with over-the-counter medications such as Tylenol and anti-inflammatories which can help tremendously. Make sure to take these according to the manufacturers recommendations. Otherwise you may develop an ulcer or a liver problem. Also, if a person is having an extreme acute flareup of pain, your doctor may prescribe short-term narcotics. Long-term narcotics for ankle arthritis pain is a bad idea. Additional medications which may help include glucosamine and chondroitin sulfate. These are available in any health food store and may have some protective effect on cartilage.
3. Physical therapy and chiropractic treatment- one of the standard methods of treating arthritis has been physical therapy. Results have been very good with these treatments with the theory being that if you strengthen the muscles around the arthritic joint that can take some pressure off of the joint. Chiropractic treatment for ankle arthritis may only have marginal benefit, but a lot of chiropractors are trained in physiotherapy which can help.
4. Injections - these injections are typically steroid based and may provide a proverbial band-aid relief for ankle arthritis. They can delay or prevent the need for surgery. Newer injections involving stem cell treatments are coming into play in medicine for ankle arthritis with regenerative medicine. That is an exciting field actually.
5. Ankle bracing - Any time a joint is arthritic, movement can hurt. That is why bracing is so helpful, it can minimize those painful movements.
These treatments can help you avoid surgery in your ankle. Surgery should be a last resort but may become necessary if all else fails.
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