Improve Knee Osteoarthritis with Traditional Chinese Exercise
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“For the uninitiated, tai chi may be a little daunting. The ancient Chinese exercise is hardly as mainstream as aerobics or the treadmill, but with its gentle, fluid movements and proven health benefits, it’s a natural arthritis workout.” – Mary Jo DiLonardo
Osteoarthritis is a chronic degenerative joint disease that is the most common form of arthritis. It produces pain, swelling, and stiffness of the joints. It is the leading cause of disability in the U.S., with about 43% of arthritis sufferers limited in mobility and about a third having limitations that affect their ability to perform their work. In the U.S., osteoarthritis affects 14% of adults over 25 years of age and 34% of those over 65.
Knee osteoarthritis effects 5% of adults over 25 years of age and 12% of those over 65. It involves the whole joint, including articular cartilage, meniscus, ligament, and peri-articular muscle. It is painful and disabling. Its causes are varied including, hereditary, injury including sports injuries, repetitive stress injuries, infection, or from being overweight. There are no cures for knee osteoarthritis. Treatments are primarily symptomatic, including weight loss, exercise, braces, pain relievers and anti-inflammatory drugs, corticosteroids, arthroscopic knee surgery, or even knee replacement.
Gentle movements of the joints with exercise appears to be helpful in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis. This suggests that alternative and complementary practices that involve gentle knee movements may be useful in for treatment. Indeed, yoga practice has been shown to be effective in treating arthritis and mind-body practices in general have been shown to reduce the gene expressions that underlie the inflammatory response which contribute to arthritis. This suggests that various forms of traditional Chinese exercises, such as Tai Chi, Qigong, and Baduanjin would be perfect treatments as they involve slow gentle movements of the limbs and mindfulness. Indeed, Tai Chi has been shown to reduce the physical symptoms of knee osteoarthritis. So, it would seem reasonable to look further into the effectiveness of traditional Chinese exercises in treating knee osteoarthritis.
In today’s Research News article “The Effects of Traditional Chinese Exercise in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.” See summary below or view the full text of the study at: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5266306/
Zhang and colleagues review the published research literature on the effectiveness of traditional Chinese exercises on the symptoms of knee osteoarthritis. They found 8 published randomized controlled trials 7 of which employed Tai Chi and 1 employed Baduanjin as the exercise. Treatment varied in duration from 8 to 24 weeks with 12 weeks the most common duration. They found that the studies demonstrated that the traditional Chinese exercises produced significant short-term improvements of moderate effect sizes in knee pain, physical function, and joint stiffness.
These are interesting results that suggest that traditional Chinese exercises are safe and effective treatments for knee osteoarthritis. There is a need for more studies of the long-term effectiveness of these practices. Since, these ancient gentle practices are completely safe, can be used with the elderly and sickly, and are inexpensive to administer, can be performed in groups or alone, at home or in a facility or even public park, it would appear to be an excellent treatment for knee osteoarthritis sufferers.
So, improve knee osteoarthritis with traditional Chinese exercise.
“Today, the vast majority of people in the U.S. who practice tai chi do it for health reasons, not just intellectual curiosity. It’s low-impact, so your knees, ankles, and other joints don’t get overly stressed. “Almost everyone can do tai chi.” – Gene Nelson
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
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Study Summary
Zhang, Y., Huang, L., Su, Y., Zhan, Z., Li, Y., & Lai, X. (2017). The Effects of Traditional Chinese Exercise in Treating Knee Osteoarthritis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. PLoS ONE, 12(1), e0170237. http://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0170237
Abstract
Background and Aims
Traditional Chinese exercise (TCE) includes a variety of exercise, which is being accepted by more and more people in the treatment of knee osteoarthritis (OA) from different countries. With the attendant, many clinical reports focus on it. Our meta-analysis aimed to systematically assess the effects of traditional Chinese exercise on pain, stiffness, physical function, quality of life, mental health and adverse events in people with knee osteoarthritis.
Methods
PubMed, Embase, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), the Web of Science, and Chinese Biomedical Literature Database (CBM) were searched from the time of their inception through April 2016 and risk of bias was independently assessed by two authors. Outcome measures included pain, physical functional, joint stiffness, quality of life, mental health and safety. For pooled outcomes, standardized mean differences (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) were calculated.
Results
Eight randomized controlled trials with a sample size of 375 cases met the criteria to be included in the study indicating that high quality literature is lacking in this field. Results of the meta-analysis showed that short-term TCE could relieve pain (SMD: -0.77;95% CI: -1.13 to -0.41; P<0.0001), improve physical function (SMD -0.75; 95% CI: -0.98 to -0.52; P<0.00001), and alleviate stiffness (SMD: -0.56; 95%: CI -0.96 to -0.16; P<0.006), but had no significant effect on quality of life (SMD: 0.57; 95% CI: 0.17 to 0.97; P = 0.005), and mental health (SMD 4.12; 95% CI: -0.50 to 8.73; P = 0.08). Moreover, TCE was not associated with serious adverse events.
Conclusions
Our systematic review revealed that short-term TCE was potentially beneficial in terms of reducing pain, improving physical function and alleviating stiffness. These results may suggest that TCE could prove useful as an adjuvant treatment for patients with knee OA. Further studies are urgently needed to confirm these results.