From reuters.com
Older people who eat the most fibre are at lower risk of developing knee pain and stiffness due to osteoarthritis (OA), new research shows.
Diets rich in fibre from plant-based foods have clear health benefits, such as lower cholesterol, better-controlled blood sugar, and a healthier weight, but most people in the U.S. don’t eat enough fibre, lead author Dr. Zhaoli Dai of Tufts University in Boston told Reuters Health.
The current average fibre intake among U.S. adults is about 15 grams, she noted. “This is far below the recommended level, which is 22.4 grams for women and 28 grams per day for men 51 years and above,” Dai said.
OA, which occurs when wear and tear on the joints degrades cartilage and leads to bone abnormalities, is extremely common in people 60 and older. It can be painful, and is also a leading cause of disability. There is no treatment for OA, aside from joint replacement, and therapies to address symptoms, such as anti-inflammatories for pain and swelling.
Given that dietary fibre is known to help prevent obesity and reduce inflammation, both of which are associated with arthritis, Dai’s team looked at diet and arthritis risk over time in two study groups. In the Osteoarthritis Initiative, which included 4,796 men and women with OA or at risk for OA, people who consumed the most dietary fibre at the start of the study were 30 percent less likely than those who ate the least fibre to develop knee pain, stiffness or swelling due to OA, or to worsening of OA, during four years of follow-up.
In the Framingham Offspring Study, which included 1,268 adults in their early 50s, on average, the top quarter of fibre consumers had a 61 percent lower risk of knee OA symptoms nine years later than the bottom quarter.
There are many mechanisms through which increased fibre intake could help ease knee arthritis symptoms, Dai said, for example by reducing inflammation and helping people to maintain a healthy weight. Fibre can also act as a pre-biotic, she added, meaning that it can help fuel the growth of beneficial microbes in the gut, which in turn also reduces inflammation.
In the Framingham Offspring Study, which included 1,268 adults in their early 50s, on average, the top quarter of fibre consumers had a 61 percent lower risk of knee OA symptoms nine years later than the bottom quarter.
There are many mechanisms through which increased fibre intake could help ease knee arthritis symptoms, Dai said, for example by reducing inflammation and helping people to maintain a healthy weight. Fibre can also act as a pre-biotic, she added, meaning that it can help fuel the growth of beneficial microbes in the gut, which in turn also reduces inflammation.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-arthritis-fiber-idUSKBN18M1VQ
Saturday 27 May 2017
Monday 22 May 2017
Aching joints CAN predict weather
From zehrcenter.com
Aching joints can really put a dent in your activities, especially in cold weather. We don’t often use “cold” and “Florida” in the same sentence, but temperatures do drop over the winter months. The factor that may be responsible for your aching joints is not snow, cold or rain, but actually, a change in barometric pressure. Barometric pressure is the force exerted onto a surface by the weight of the atmosphere at any given point. As cold weather moves in, the barometric pressure begins to drop.
Cold weather does not affect everyone with arthritis, but if you experience aching joints as the mercury drops, try the remedies below.
Layer your clothing. Layers trap body heat and help you avoid rapid temperature transitions between indoors and out. Pay special attention to the head, hands and feet, as majority of heat is lost from the body’s extremities. Make good use of hats, scarves, and mittens or gloves.
Stay active with low-impact indoor activities like mall-walking, yoga or dancing.
Stretch at least 10 minutes every morning to relax stiff muscles.
Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine as these products have a drying effect on cartilage. They also cause dehydration. Even mild dehydration can make you more sensitive to the pain of your aching joints.
Alternate heat therapy, such as warm baths and heating pads, which help to ease pain, with cold therapy, such as ice packs, to reduce swelling.
Get a massage. Research in the June 2015 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine suggests that getting an hour-long massage once a week for at least eight weeks reduces pain. This is most likely due to that fact that muscles surround your aching joints, which may be the source of some of the pain.
Aching joints can really put a dent in your activities, especially in cold weather. We don’t often use “cold” and “Florida” in the same sentence, but temperatures do drop over the winter months. The factor that may be responsible for your aching joints is not snow, cold or rain, but actually, a change in barometric pressure. Barometric pressure is the force exerted onto a surface by the weight of the atmosphere at any given point. As cold weather moves in, the barometric pressure begins to drop.
Cold weather does not affect everyone with arthritis, but if you experience aching joints as the mercury drops, try the remedies below.
Layer your clothing. Layers trap body heat and help you avoid rapid temperature transitions between indoors and out. Pay special attention to the head, hands and feet, as majority of heat is lost from the body’s extremities. Make good use of hats, scarves, and mittens or gloves.
Stay active with low-impact indoor activities like mall-walking, yoga or dancing.
Stretch at least 10 minutes every morning to relax stiff muscles.
Avoid caffeine, alcohol and nicotine as these products have a drying effect on cartilage. They also cause dehydration. Even mild dehydration can make you more sensitive to the pain of your aching joints.
Alternate heat therapy, such as warm baths and heating pads, which help to ease pain, with cold therapy, such as ice packs, to reduce swelling.
Get a massage. Research in the June 2015 issue of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine suggests that getting an hour-long massage once a week for at least eight weeks reduces pain. This is most likely due to that fact that muscles surround your aching joints, which may be the source of some of the pain.
Friday 12 May 2017
Cracking, popping joints may foretell arthritis
From whtc.com
(Reuters Health) - Grating, cracking or popping sounds around joints may predict future arthritis, especially in the knees, according to a recent U.S. study.
Among thousands of people with no knee pain who were followed for three years, one quarter had noisy knees yet they made up three quarters of the cases of symptomatic knee arthritis that emerged by the end of the study period, researchers found.
“Many people who have signs of osteoarthritis on X-rays do not necessarily complain about pain. Presently, there are no known strategies for preventing the development of pain in this group,” said lead study author Grace Lo of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
Especially when people have joint space loss or other arthritis-related changes visible on X-rays, their also having noisy knees can be considered a sign of higher risk for developing pain within the next year, she said.
Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting more than 30 million adults in the United States, Lo and colleagues write in Arthritis Care and Research. Symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, which means X-ray evidence of arthritis plus pain or stiffness, affects about 16 percent of adults older than 60, they note.
Lo and colleagues analysed data from 3,495 participants ranging in age from about 50 to 70 in a long-term study conducted in hospitals in Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. None had symptomatic knee arthritis at the start.
The researchers looked at how often people experienced knee pain, stiffness and “crepitus,” or noises and scraping feelings in their knees.
During clinic visits, people were asked questions like, “Do you feel grinding, hear clicking or any other type of noise when your right knee moves?” and “During the past 12 months, have you had pain, aching or stiffness in or around your right knee on most days for at least one month?” The patients were evaluated at the beginning of the study and again at 12, 24 and 36 months. X-rays were also taken once a year.
At the start, 65 percent of participants said they had no crepitus, 11 percent experienced it “rarely,” 15 percent had it “sometimes” and 9 percent had it “often” or “always.”
Overall, 635 participants, 18 percent, developed symptomatic arthritis of the knee during the study period.
Even after adjusting for weight and other factors, researchers found that odds of developing symptomatic arthritis rose along with the frequency of crepitus. Those who reported it “rarely” had 50 percent higher risk than those who never had it, and those with crepitus “sometimes” or “often” had about double the odds.
People with crepitus “always” were three times more likely to develop arthritis over four years than those who never had it.
Older age and having crepitus also increased the likelihood of developing arthritis, and men with crepitus were more likely than women with noisy knees to go on to develop arthritis.
“Differences across genders is interesting and unexplained. This may tell us about differences in symptom reporting or the biology of osteoarthritis,” said Daniel Solomon, the chair of arthritis and population health at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“Knowing how to predict who will develop symptomatic osteoarthritis may give patients and providers clues to who should receive earlier treatment or even prevention,” Solomon, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email.
“It would be helpful to look at the MRIs of the people who had X-ray evidence, no pain and always had crepitus to understand what is happening in their knees,” Lo said. “This could help identify ways to decrease the risk for developing knee pain.”
Since MRI scans are more sensitive than X-rays, Lo added, researchers for future studies may be able to see osteophyte formations or other symptoms around the knee that they can’t usually see.
“Not all noises coming from a knee are a bad sign,” she said. “It might be helpful to ask your doctor for an X-ray to see if you have evidence of osteoarthritis and then take precautions from there.”
http://whtc.com/news/articles/2017/may/11/cracking-popping-joints-may-foretell-arthritis/
(Reuters Health) - Grating, cracking or popping sounds around joints may predict future arthritis, especially in the knees, according to a recent U.S. study.
Among thousands of people with no knee pain who were followed for three years, one quarter had noisy knees yet they made up three quarters of the cases of symptomatic knee arthritis that emerged by the end of the study period, researchers found.
“Many people who have signs of osteoarthritis on X-rays do not necessarily complain about pain. Presently, there are no known strategies for preventing the development of pain in this group,” said lead study author Grace Lo of Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas.
Especially when people have joint space loss or other arthritis-related changes visible on X-rays, their also having noisy knees can be considered a sign of higher risk for developing pain within the next year, she said.
Osteoarthritis is the most common form of arthritis, affecting more than 30 million adults in the United States, Lo and colleagues write in Arthritis Care and Research. Symptomatic knee osteoarthritis, which means X-ray evidence of arthritis plus pain or stiffness, affects about 16 percent of adults older than 60, they note.
Lo and colleagues analysed data from 3,495 participants ranging in age from about 50 to 70 in a long-term study conducted in hospitals in Rhode Island, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland. None had symptomatic knee arthritis at the start.
The researchers looked at how often people experienced knee pain, stiffness and “crepitus,” or noises and scraping feelings in their knees.
During clinic visits, people were asked questions like, “Do you feel grinding, hear clicking or any other type of noise when your right knee moves?” and “During the past 12 months, have you had pain, aching or stiffness in or around your right knee on most days for at least one month?” The patients were evaluated at the beginning of the study and again at 12, 24 and 36 months. X-rays were also taken once a year.
At the start, 65 percent of participants said they had no crepitus, 11 percent experienced it “rarely,” 15 percent had it “sometimes” and 9 percent had it “often” or “always.”
Overall, 635 participants, 18 percent, developed symptomatic arthritis of the knee during the study period.
Even after adjusting for weight and other factors, researchers found that odds of developing symptomatic arthritis rose along with the frequency of crepitus. Those who reported it “rarely” had 50 percent higher risk than those who never had it, and those with crepitus “sometimes” or “often” had about double the odds.
People with crepitus “always” were three times more likely to develop arthritis over four years than those who never had it.
Older age and having crepitus also increased the likelihood of developing arthritis, and men with crepitus were more likely than women with noisy knees to go on to develop arthritis.
“Differences across genders is interesting and unexplained. This may tell us about differences in symptom reporting or the biology of osteoarthritis,” said Daniel Solomon, the chair of arthritis and population health at Harvard Medical School in Boston.
“Knowing how to predict who will develop symptomatic osteoarthritis may give patients and providers clues to who should receive earlier treatment or even prevention,” Solomon, who wasn’t involved in the study, told Reuters Health by email.
“It would be helpful to look at the MRIs of the people who had X-ray evidence, no pain and always had crepitus to understand what is happening in their knees,” Lo said. “This could help identify ways to decrease the risk for developing knee pain.”
Since MRI scans are more sensitive than X-rays, Lo added, researchers for future studies may be able to see osteophyte formations or other symptoms around the knee that they can’t usually see.
“Not all noises coming from a knee are a bad sign,” she said. “It might be helpful to ask your doctor for an X-ray to see if you have evidence of osteoarthritis and then take precautions from there.”
http://whtc.com/news/articles/2017/may/11/cracking-popping-joints-may-foretell-arthritis/
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