Want Knee Pain Relief? Walk THIS Way!

For people living with knee osteoarthritis, many daily activities—even getting around the house—can be a source of pain. Now a study has revealed that changing the way you walk can deliver significant knee pain relief. Here’s what you need to know.

Walk Your Way to Knee Pain Relief

A new study published in the journal The Lancet Rheumatology has revealed that you can reduce knee pain by changing your walking gait. Moreover, you can take enough pressure off your knee joint to delay its deterioration, possibly delaying knee replacement surgery—or avoiding it altogether!

For the purpose of this study, researchers at the University of Utah, NYU and Stanford University worked with 68 participants with knee osteoarthritis in its early stages. Half of the group was taught to change the angle of their feet when walking, point them in or out by about 5 to 10 degrees during movement. (Each participant’s ideal position was slightly different, and researchers worked with the people in this group to find their perfect placement. In their first two visits, those participants walked on a pressure-sensitive treadmill, recorded with motion-capture cameras to capture their gait mechanics. This feedback helped researchers decide if the participants should turn their toes inward or outward during movement, and whether they should choose an adjustment of 5 or 10 degrees.) The other half of the group was taught a different technique that did not change their foot alignment during walking.  

Once the participants found their ideal foot angle, they were came back to the lab to practice that gate for a 6-week period, using biofeedback to help them maintain their ideal foot angle when walking on the specialized treadmill. After the 6-week training period, they were told to practice the new movement pattern for at least 20 minutes each day, until it became natural.

The volunteers were trained for six weeks and were encouraged to practise their new gait for at least 20 minutes a day and until it started to feel natural.

After a year, patients were asked to self-report on their perceived knee pain relief. They also received MRIs to determine how the change in gait impacted joint deterioration. And here’s what they found. Lead author Scott Ulrich said, “The reported decrease in pain [for those who changed their gait] over the placebo group was somewhere between what you’d expect from an over-the-counter medication, like ibuprofen, and a narcotic, like oxycontin. With the MRIs, we also saw slower degradation of a marker of cartilage health in the intervention group, which was quite exciting.” Ultimately, he concluded, “Especially for people in their 30’s, 40’s, or 50’s, osteoarthritis could mean decades of pain management before they’re recommended for a joint replacement. This intervention could help fill that large treatment gap.”

Knee Pain Relief Without Joint Replacement

At the Texas Knee Institute, we are thrilled to offer patients non-surgical treatments to relieve the pain of knee osteoarthritis. Currently, the researchers of this study are working to streamline the gait-retraining so that it can be deployed clinically. But that doesn’t mean you’ll need to undergo invasive surgery if you want pain relief right now. Instead, we encourage you to contact our team contact our team contact our team and request a consultation. When you come into one of our seven Texas locations, we can review your candidacy for Genicular Artery Embolization (GAE) a minimally-invasive procedure that relieves osteoarthritis knee pain, helping you delay or avoid knee replacement surgery!