5 Ways To Treat Your Arthritis Today To Feel Better Tomorrow

November 11, 2022 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Arthritis is one of the most common medical issues, having been diagnosed in roughly 1 in every 4 adults. Because it’s so common, many people assume that arthritis-related symptoms are simply something that they have to get used to dealing with, but that simply isn’t true. And while you can’t turn back the clock and restore your joint health to how it felt decades ago, you can improve your symptoms and slow or stop the progression of joint degeneration.

Best of all, treatment is oftentimes pretty simple and only involves a few adjustments to your daily life. With that in mind, we highlight five things you can do to treat your arthritis today so that you’ll feel better tomorrow.

Daily Treatments For Arthritis

Arthritis is a degenerative condition that can be caused by natural factors like normal wear and tear and aging, or it can be exacerbated by injuries and illnesses. However, you can fight back against your arthritis by doing these five things regularly:

1. Exercise – Perhaps the best thing you can do to improve the health of your joints and help them become stronger for tomorrow is exercise. Exercise strengthens your joints and the soft tissues that help to keep them stable. Pressure on your joints has less of a degenerative impact on the joint when the supportive structures are stronger and better able to disperse this stress. Strive to get at least 30-45 minutes of exercise each day, or at least 3-4 times a week.

2. Eat Right – Your diet can also play a role in arthritis symptom prevalence. Foods that are high in sugar or fat tend to be pro-inflammatory, and this inflammation can cause problems for you joints. Avoid these pro-inflammatory foods and reach for more fruits and vegetables, and you may find that you are experiencing fewer arthritis symptoms.

3. Use Ice And Heat To Your Advantage – Ice and heat can help to improve your circulation or prevent swelling and inflammation, so use their powers wisely! Ice your arthritic joints after exercise or periods of extended activity to help keep swelling and inflammation at bay, or use a heating pad if your joints are feeling stiff or uncomfortable.

4. Physical Therapy – Physical therapy is very similar to exercise, but it can be even more beneficial at controlling symptoms because you can target specific areas. Your pain management specialist or a physical therapist can help set you up with some home-based therapy exercises to perform each day or when symptoms begin to help you get more control over your arthritis. Physical therapy can be both a treatment and prevention technique, so don’t underestimate the power of connecting with a physical therapist!

5. Mind Your Posture – Finally, it’s important to be mindful of your posture each and every day. When your body is out of alignment, you’re putting excessive stress on certain areas, including pivotal joints. Poor posture or body mechanics can cause problems for your facet joints in your spine, the joints in your wrists or put excess pressure on your knees. Improve your posture each day, and your joints will thank you for it!

If you do these things each day, and you connect with a pain management specialist like Dr. Cohn, we’re confident that you’ll notice an improvement in your arthritic symptoms! For more information, or for help with a different pain issue, give our office a call today at (952) 738-4580.

Five Daily Ways You Can Prevent And Treat Arthritis

June 4, 2020 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Arthritis is one of if most common health conditions that affects individuals over the age of 50. In fact, roughly 1 in 4 Americans over the age of 54 have been diagnosed with arthritis, so odds are you know someone in your life who is battling the condition.

The tricky part about arthritis is that there’s not a lot that can be done to turn back the clock on your joints once the problem has developed. We can help reduce symptoms and make daily life more bearable, but given that it is a degenerative condition, it’s difficult to restore your joints to a younger, healthier version of itself. Instead, we always preach that prevention is preferred to treatment. Below, we take a closer look at five things you should strive to do each day to help ward off arthritis in your knees, hips, shoulders and wrists.

Daily Arthritis Prevention Activities

Here’s a look at five things you can do each day to reduce your risk of arthritis.

1. Exercise – Exercise may seem like it’s hard on your joints, but regular, moderate-intensity exercise is one of the best things you can do to keep your joints healthy. Exercise helps to prevent joint stiffness and muscle atrophy that can contribute to joint dysfunction. Protect your joints by working to strengthen them through daily exercise.

2. Weight Management – Exercise can also help you keep this factor in mind. Weight management is key for preventing arthritis. If you’re carrying extra weight, your joints are going to be the ones feeling this stress. Losing just a few pounds can take a lot of stress off your joints. Considering that we take roughly 8,000-10,000 steps a day on average, that’s a lot of stress on your knees that can be avoided if you just strive to maintain a healthy weight.

3. Eat Healthy – Now, every meal doesn’t need to be perfect, but if you can have more bad days than good when it comes to your diet, you’ll be putting yourself in a good position to stave off arthritis. A poor diet can lead to excess weight, which as we talked about above will challenge your joints. It can also contribute to joint inflammation, making certain movements painful and contributing to a reduced likelihood to exercise and strengthen your joints.

4. Prevent Joint Injuries – Not all acute injuries are preventable, but you can reduce your risk of an injury by taking time to stretch before activity and avoiding overstressing joints with too much activity in too short a time period. Know your limits when it comes to certain physical activities. Overexerting yourself can put excess stress on your joints, which can lead them to break down and become arthritic.

5. Avoid Smoking – Finally, ditch the tobacco products if you want to get serious about reducing your arthritis risk. Studies show that smoking increases your risk of rheumatoid arthritis, among other health issues. Give up smoking or stay away from the habit if you want to reduce your arthritis risk.

And if you believe you’re in the beginning stages of arthritis, talk to a pain specialist like Dr. Cohn. Early intervention can prevent symptoms from getting worse, so reach out to his clinic today for more information.

Don’t Give In To Arthritis

December 9, 2019 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Last week I read an article in the Washington Post that described how some patients, frustrated with their arthritic condition, seem to give into the disease and let it take hold of their life. Arthritis is a difficult condition to treat since there’s simply no way to turn back the clock and regrow lost cartilage, but with that said, we shouldn’t just give in to arthritis, because that’s only going to make things worse.

When it comes to managing your arthritis, you have to attack the condition head on. Simply taking a painkiller and sitting on your couch will do nothing to make the problem better, and it will contribute to the deconditioning of your joints, effectively advancing your arthritis. Instead, you need to pursue active treatments, because although your joints may never feel like you’re 21 again, it will keep the disease from getting worse, and that’s how you best manage arthritis.

Actively Managing Arthritis

Remaining active is key when it comes to combating arthritis. You may have to take it easier at times, and you may have to be smarter about the way you stay active, but you need to keep moving. If you need knee braces in order to help prevent pain when playing basketball or when going for a walk, invest in some quality braces so you can stay active. If it’s your back or spine that is bothering you, invest in some supportive shoe options to take some stress off your body so you can keep moving. If it’s the activity that’s bothering you, find some other ways to be active.

For example, many arthritis patients say that running is too difficult because it puts too much stress on their joints. If you’re finding this to be the case, look for activities that keep you moving that don’t put as much stress on your body. Swimming, for example, is a fantastic example of a low-impact exercise, and because water is naturally resistant, you only need to swim or walk around the inside of the pool to strengthen your joints and keep them healthy.

Other activities like cycling, yoga, tai chi and kayaking are all low-impact exercises that strengthen your joints and won’t overstress your body. These activities will help you strengthen the supportive muscles and soft tissues around your joints so that movements aren’t as painful.

If you need to take pain medication to manage your arthritis, that’s fine, but make sure they aren’t your only form of treatment. Don’t take painkillers just to lessen your pain, take them so that activities are more bearable and use them in combination with other active treatments. Paired correctly with other treatment strategies, opioids can play a crucial role in helping you best manage your arthritis.

If you have arthritis and want some individualized help getting your condition under control, reach out to Dr. Cohn’s office today.

What Types of Patients Do Pain Doctors Treat?

July 14, 2014May 10, 2016 / Thomas Cohn, MD

Finding the right care for each individual patient who is dealing with chronic pain can be difficult. If a patient has ongoing difficulties with pain symptoms, additional medical expertise is often helpful with symptom management. The comprehensive Pain Care program at CDI is designed to help manage these complex and difficult problems.

Pain Management at CDI

The Pain Care program at CDI will see any patient who has ongoing problems with pain. The program is run by a Board Certified Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation specialists with subspecialty training in Pain. We are available to help evaluate and diagnose medical problems that are causing ongoing pain symptoms in any region of the body. Common problems that we usually see include patients with:

neck pain
headaches
joint pain
neuropathy
low back pain
mid back pain
multilevel pain problems.

The goal is to develop an individualized comprehensive treatment plan to better control symptoms on a conservative basis. Early management of pain problems often leads to solutions that completely solve the issues.

Treating Pain Problems

A typical low back pain patient may have muscles strains, disc issues, nerve irritation, lumbar facet joint pain, or even pelvic problems. A comprehensive evaluation and examination often leads to an appropriate diagnosis and a number of treatment options. A Physiatrist can work with a patient to complete further testing, and if necessary, assist with physical therapy, medication, and interventions to overcome the medical problems causing low back pain. Muscle strains for instance may only need physical therapy and appropriate short-term medications. Lumbar facet joint problems cause axial low back pain and may benefit from a combination of injections, radio-frequency neurolysis/lesioning, and physical therapy. Depending on the diagnosis, a comprehensive treatment plan with the available options for management can be discussed and implemented with the patient.

Neck pain issues often cause headaches and can be treated with a number of conservative interventions. The Pain Care team can help diagnose and develop a comprehensive management strategy. One common problem causing headaches is irritation of the cervical facets, and this often occurs after trauma, especially motor vehicle accidents. This pain is often known as a whiplash injury. It often resolves with conservative physical therapy and short-term medication, but about 10% of cases require more intense intervention. These patients are often helped with injections and sometimes radio-frequency lesioning of nerves in the neck. Successful management often cures the problems for a prolonged time.

Pain is a complex problems, and every patient is unique with their own set of important issues. If all the answers were obvious, there would be no need for our services. Unfortunately, pain is the most common problem bringing a patient to the doctor’s office. When it does not resolve in short period of time, having the skills of a specialist is often extremely beneficial. There is not one solution, one medication, one shot, or one specific intervention that is right for every patient. Pain Care is designed to integrate and coordinate our skills into the community to treat these challenging patients with their current care team.

Pain management is not a new field. At CDI we have recognized the need to provide a more comprehensive service to help with the management of these complex and difficult patients. With a comprehensive approach to the evaluation and management of these patients by a Physiatrist, we hope to bring a successful approach to resolving these difficult problems within the community. At CDI we hope to partner with a community of physicians to better serve these patients and their providers.