Does Weight Loss Cure Knee Pain?

Does Weight Loss Cure Knee Pain?

If you suffer from chronic knee pain and have been advised that the way to treat that pain is to lose weight, you may benefit from speaking with a trusted Pottstown, PA knee surgeon at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania. It is a good idea to seek a second opinion under this circumstance, because weight loss does not tend to be a panacea when it comes to managing knee pain. Additionally, the advice to lose weight may help your knee pain over time, but this advice will do nothing to alleviate the knee pain that you are currently experiencing on a daily basis.

One of the primary reasons why it is unhelpful to tell people who are struggling with their weight and who are struggling with knee pain as a result of extra stress being placed on their joints to simply lose weight is that until weight has come off the body, it can be difficult to exercise enough on painful knees to achieve an optimal calorie deficit. It is partially for this reason and partially for the reason that no one should have to suffer through pain until they hit their target weight that it is important to integrate weight loss into a broader knee pain management plan if a patient is overweight, but to avoid having weight loss serve as the only knee pain management recommendation given to the affected patient.

Crafting a Broader Knee Pain Management Plan

At Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we treat patients as individuals with unique needs. We understand that not every treatment plan will work in the same ways for every patient. Some knee pain patients find profound relief after receiving knee injections and attending physical therapy. Other patients find that their need for surgical intervention cannot be overcome by a desire to avoid having surgery. These patients discover that treatments that benefit other patients simply do not give them the desired results that they so crave. Under these circumstances, surgery may indeed be the best option.

If you are suffering from chronic knee pain and you are overweight, it is important to work with a medical care provider who will both honor the fact that losing weight will take some strain off of your joints, but also that you are in pain and in need of effective pain management right now. If a provider is not willing to treat your pain and to help you become as mobile and as functional as you can be in order to be in a better position to lose weight and improve your quality of life, it is time to seek out a second opinion of a provider who will treat you as a whole human being. It can be easy to get discouraged when health care providers treat weight loss as if it is a cure all. Know that when you work with Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we will never project such narrow-minded thinking upon you or any of our patients.