Strengthening Exercises Better for Knee Arthritis Pain Relief than Popping Pain Pills

By Dr. Paul Anderson M.D.
Sports and Pain Medicine Expert

A Japanese study showed that you experience more knee arthritis pain relief with a home knee exercise program than taking arthritis drugs ( NSAIDS) like Aleve, Naprosyn, Motrin etc. The other advantage of strengthening knee exercises is there is no side effects like NSAIDS like bleeding ulcers, heart attacks and early death.

Also NSAIDS while offering you minimal pain relief actually destroy knee cartilage accelerating arthritis 3 times faster. Here's the study.

Effect of home exercise of quadriceps on knee osteoarthritis compared with non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs: a randomized controlled trial. Doi T, Akai M, Fujino K, Iwaya T, Kurosawa H, Hayashi K, Marui E. Source Fukuoka Clinic, Tokyo, Japan.

OBJECTIVES: To examine the effect of home-based exercise on knee osteoarthritis among Japanese in comparison with that of non-steroidal anti inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs).

DESIGN: An open-labeled, randomized, controlled, multi-clinic trial compared home-based quadriceps exercise with NSAIDs. Treatments were basically evaluated after 8 wks and compared with the baseline scores. Outcomes were evaluated with a set of psychometric measurements including the Western Ontario and McMaster Universities Arthritis Index (WOMAC), 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey (SF-36), Japanese Knee Osteoarthritis Measure (JKOM), and pain with the visual analog scale.

RESULTS: A total of 142 patients entered this trial to provide the baseline data. After 21 cases withdrew, the final number analyzed was 121 cases: 63 for the exercise group and 58 for the NSAIDs group. Between these two groups, there was no significant difference in gender, age, body height and weight, body mass index, or each score at baseline. The subjects in both groups showed improvements in all scores at the end of intervention. The difference in improvement rate of each score between the two groups was not statistically significant, though the mean rank score measured with JKOM in the exercise was slightly better than that of the NSAIDs.

CONCLUSIONS: Home-based exercise using quadriceps strengthening improves knee osteoarthritis better than NSAIDs.