Before You Trade In Your Knee Fora New Model…

By Lisa J. Allen, PT, DPT

BioMechanic Physical Therapy

. https://biomechanicphysicaltherapy.com

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Before You Trade In Your Knee Fora New Model…

This article is about options for arthritis.  What is it for you? Pills, surgery… Or “Plan C”? When dealing with arthritis pain whether it’s your knee, hip, shoulder, feet, toes or hands… You have two choices: pain medicines and shots or joint replacement. Early on you might receive lesser procedures to scope and clean the joint up a bit, but when it gets too bad it’s ultimately joint replacement. 

Regenerative medicine comprises a set of great new techniques. Some are performed by your physician and may be invasive, such as injections.  However there are lesser known regenerative tools that are non-invasive and delivered by machine in physical therapy. 

Physical therapy has long been a standard prescription for patients with arthritis usually aimed at strengthening muscles around joints and increasing range via exercising and stretching. There are new regenerative medicine tools used by a physical therapist that you can access these without a prescription. Your doctor would endorse it if they knew about it, but not everyone is aware of these very impressive tools. I’m talking about shockwave and class4 MLS laser.  These regenerative techniques actually heal. Both can cut healing time in half for bone or soft tissue damage and both can heal your arthritis to a degree. If you have some cartilage left we may be able to prevent needing surgery.  For those of you who are bone on bone, we can markedly decrease pain, get some healing done and delay that eventual surgery. Wouldn’t it be nice to leave your now standard routine of drugs behind?  We have a patient who has been able to hold off his knee replacement via MLS Laser and Shockwave for almost 4 years. 

When you first start treatment it’s a longer series of 6 or more treatments weekly. Later on it is episodic;  when your pain starts coming back you come in for treatment, go away happy and come in again when you need us. The MLS laser uses light and the shockwave uses sound. They both work for tendonitis, bursitis, arthritis, fasciitis, sprains, strains and tears. 

If you’re reading this article you most likely have severe arthritis or know someone who does. Using these two in combination can dramatically reduce pain, increase range of motion, decrease medicine use and postpone that surgery of trading in for a new artificial model.  So before you decide on the trade-in… check out these powerful new tools.