Degenerative Joint Disease

By Heather Allen, MS, PT

Journeying into Healing, LLC

. http://www.journeyingintohealing.com/

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Degenerative Joint Disease

Most people think degeneration of their joints should be expected with age. You hear it all the time, “I turned 50 and everything just started falling apart.” People think just because they played sports when they were younger, performed heavy labor at work, or were a weekend warrior they should expect their joints to wear out. Believe it or not, this is just a myth.

First of all, your joints don't have a clock attached to them with an alarm set to go off at age 50 (or 40, or earlier). The bones in your shoulder, knee, or spine, don't just decide one day to start rubbing and wearing on one another. It is true that as we age our body systems dehydrate some and can cause cartilage to lose thickness and discs to lose height. However, that typically isn't enough of a driving force to generate the changes we see in joints on X-rays and MRI's. Your muscles are the greater driving force behind those pits and rough spots.

How can muscles lead to wear and tear of a joint? The answer is easy when you understand the anatomy. Muscles surround joints helping to stabilize or move them, depending on the task. In most cases, a muscle crosses just one joint but some of our larger muscles, such as the quadriceps and hamstrings (in our thighs), cross two joints. When a muscle, or group of muscles, gets tight it causes compression on the joint or joints that it crosses. The tighter the muscle(s), the greater the compressive force. The greater that compressive force, the more wear and tear on the joint surfaces.

So what can we do about this? Prevention is the best medicine. We should stretch daily regardless of athleticism, occupation or age. By maintaining our flexibility we prevent excessive stress on the joint and avoid the compressive forces that come from chronically tight muscles. This stretching should include treatment of the fascia, which surrounds the muscle down to the smallest fibril. Without manipulation of the fascial network, muscles will rebound to their tight compressive state.

Not having any joint pain? For most people, the tight muscles cause no pain until the compression has occurred for too long, the joint damage already done.

Don't wait until it's too late, seek a skilled manual therapist now who can treat your muscles and fascia, and get you started on a home stretching program.