Can Hyaluronic Acid or knee gel injections help somebody who's suffering from knee osteoarthritis.
In this video, I'm going to tell you seven reasons Hyaluronic Acid gel injections might
be helpful for knee osteoarthritis. Let me give you a quick overview of what Hyaluronic
Acid gel injections are. They've got different names. viscosupplementation injections is
another one, Rooster comb injections, hyaluronic acid. And of course, gel injections are the
most common names used out there for all the same thing. Now these originally started out
as what's called a rooster comb injection. And if you don't know what a rooster comb
is, it's that red thing on the top of the head of a rooster or a hen, a chicken. And
they used to get that stuff and break it down somehow and make it into Hyaluronic Acid gel
injections for knee joints. Now the stuff that you see on the market today is synthetic
or artificially developed in a lab by a pharmaceutical company. And the reason why it's called Hyaluronic
Acid gel is because that's the same stuff that's inside your knee joint already you
have fluid inside a knee joint, that's called the synovial fluid. synovial is just the medical
term for joint. So it's a joint fluid. And one of the chemicals that's inside of synovial
fluid normally is highly erotic acid. So the theory behind this is that they're injecting
a substance, it's nearly identical, almost the same as what your body makes in hopes
of helping out the knee joint to provide some cushion to provide some nourishment to the
damaged cartilage that you might have because of knee osteoarthritis. There's different
protocols or different ways that this is given to patients. The most common way is once every
six months or so that's what insurances out there can cover so that's what doctors end
up doing. But there are some more aggressive approaches where they do one every week for
about three to five weeks. under that protocol people are reporting benefits at about four
weeks in it does not typically give an instant pain relief for you know, within days pain
relief, like a cortisone injection might. But the theory is that this is less aggressive
than cortisone. And so it's a little safer and more like what's inside your knee joint
already. There's different brand names out there, and they all have funny names, I'm
just going to read you the list of brand names in case your doctor shouted out a brand name
of you getting an E gel injection this might be on the list. The most common is Synvisc
ortho disk is another one Heiligen MANOVA disk, su parts U FXA. Gel one su parts and
Su parts f x their side effects of getting this injection. So far all we know is that
you get pain during the injection right after the injection just because of the needle going
in, and maybe some swelling associated with that as well. Now, some insurances pay for
these injections. But if your insurance doesn't, you're looking at a cost of about $400 to
over $1,000 per injection. And these costs vary by region and by country that you're
in. So you have to check with your doctor who might do these injections to get an accurate
number. Now let's get into the seven reasons why these might actually be helpful why these
injections could be beneficial for your knee arthritis problem. Reason number one is that
it could delay you getting a knee surgery like a knee replacement surgery, getting this
injection might give you enough pain relief to put off getting a surgery so that you can
work on other things, and at least feel normal and not feel so desperate to get a surgery.
Oftentimes people are in so much pain that they jumped the gun into getting surgery,
when really they just need to give themselves some time recover, get the inflammation down
and they can actually last quite a bit like several months, even years without getting
a knee replacement before the symptoms flare up again. Reason number two is that you can
get more restful sleep. If your knee isn't as irritated and swollen at night and it's
not waking you up so much then you have a shot at being able to sleep better and heal
better because when you go to sleep at night, that's when your body does the most healing.
So if you can get more restful sleep and allow your knee joint to heal better, that's definitely
a benefit. Reason number three is that you might be able to tolerate more time on your
feet by getting a highly erotic acid gel injection. Typically people with knee osteoarthritis
swell more and are in more pain after they've been standing or walking around. Their knee
tends to swell. So if you get this injection theoretically it should cushion your joint
a bit more allows some pain relief to go to the joint so that you can tolerate doing your
household chores, being able to get outside to appointments to visit to do more normal
things for at least a short time. Reason number four is related or piggybacking off of Reason
number three is if you can be on your feet more than you should be able to tolerate some
more exercise, which is beneficial for helping knee osteoarthritis. And this is especially
helpful because the right kind of exercise can help build long term benefit because hyaluronic
acid injections as of now are shown to just provide short term benefit, not long term,
it's not fixing the arthritis problem. To fix an arthritis problem in the knee joint,
you need to fix a muscle imbalance and muscle imbalances are fixed with proper exercise.
So if you go get a highly running gel or viscosupplementation injection, then you might be able to buy yourself
some more time to exercise without as much pain or swelling so that you can fix the root
muscle imbalance that's setting up your knee problem and get some relief for the long term.
Now, just as a side note to this, if you've never seen this channel before, we talk a
lot about muscle imbalances affecting knee problems, especially knee osteoarthritis,
and the most common muscle imbalance is over dominant quads causing too much compression
at the knee joints and exercising the right muscles. Usually the glute muscles, the butt
muscles up here in the hip tends to shut down the quads a bit so that they behave more normally
and they're not so over dominance. And that normalizes the pressure in the knee joint
which sets up long term knee arthritis relief. Now I just want to make you aware that we
offer a knee arthritis recovery program that's completely focused on getting the irritation
down in the knee joints and fixing that root muscle imbalance so that you can get long
term recovery of your knee arthritis. The details for this program are linked in the
description below. So go check that out. Reason number five is that you can possibly reduce
your oral medication intake. If you get an injection like this, this injection might
offer you enough pain relief that you don't feel like you need to take as much oral pain
medications things like Tylenol, ibuprofen, naproxen, and talking about like Aleve, Advil,
Excedrin, those types, those types of medications are often taken to get relief for knee osteoarthritis.
But of course, they start to affect your liver, your kidneys and other organs over time. And
you don't want to build up those damages to your organs. So getting a hyaluronic acid
gel injection might reduce the amount of medications you're taking, so you can save your ordinance.
Reason number six is that this may nourish the cartilage inside your knee joint so that
you can begin to heal the cartilage. Now, it's unclear at this point there just isn't
enough research available, which doesn't mean that it doesn't happen. We just don't know
because the research hasn't been done. But it's possible that the highly erotic acid
could nourish the damaged cartilage inside your knee joints, and possibly create a healing
situation so that you can get some long term benefit. Now, like I said, this is unclear
the research is nowhere near concrete on this. But there's a lot of things out there that
are not concrete that we do and can help. So I think it's worth a shot. If any injection
out there, I think this is the best option that has the least amount of side effects
that we know of at this point. And personally speaking as a expert, physical therapist,
I've seen patients get these injections. And it's mixed some report some benefit, and some
report no benefit about the same. I have not seen anybody say that they got worse though,
I haven't come across that yet. But I think these gel injections use in combination with
other treatment approaches are a winning solution. The reason number seven is that the side effects
seem to be less severe than doing cortisone or steroid injections, a steroid injections
have been around for much longer, and they're way more studied than these hyaluronic acid
injections. But we do know that cortisone injections have some massive side effects
like they deteriorate connective tissue over time, meaning they actually damage cartilage,
ligaments and other tissues. If you get so many of them. Usually doctors will catch you
at three cortisone injections or steroid injections per year. Because there's research to show
that if you get them more often than that, you're going to have that damage that they're
finding in the research studies. Another side effect of steroid injections is a spike in
blood sugar, which is especially dangerous if you're diabetic. Now hyaluronic acid injections
aren't shown to spike blood sugar at this time. So it may be a good alternative. If
you're a diabetic. Some of the questions that I get about gel injections are do gel injections
work for bone on bone knee pain. And my quick answer to that is we don't know for sure I
just told you a second ago I've seen patients get these injections and report benefit and
I've seen both ends of it. Some people say no benefit whatsoever. And some people say
that it actually did provide some relief of their pain, even when they're bone on bone.
I've had many, many patients in here that are bone on bone reported by this but the
X rays, but they it's mixed benefits. I can't tell you with certainty that I that it's going
to help you have to try it out for yourself to see and some of the questions that I get
are how many gel injections do you need? This depends on your doctor's protocol and what
your insurance is going to cover because your doctor might say, well insurance covers one
every six months or getting to this year. And other doctors might say hey, if you're
willing to pay out of pocket, let's give you three in a row. Come in one so we up to five
weeks we'll do this. They may do more than they do less. There's we don't know an exact
protocol at this point and exactly what's going to happen as far as your knee health
improvement. And the last question I'll answer that I commonly get about gel injections for
the knee is can I walk after getting an injection? Or what should I do after getting a knee gel
injection. And the general advice I've seen doctors give and I think it's appropriate
coming from a physical therapist is they say just rest enough to recover from the actual
injection, you know, from the needle piercing through to get to where it needs to go, you
have some irritation and healing to do. And because it's a needle, it's a tiny bit, give
it a day or two and you should be back up on your feet up to your tolerance level. Depending
on what you feel you can do. That might include walking around for normal everyday activities
that might include going to exercise, it really depends on what you were doing before and
what you're able to do. Now. You just have to let the knee pain be your guide, the swelling,
any symptoms that you get from the arthritis, you don't want to be flaring those up at all.
Whether you've had an injection or not, you just don't want to be irritating your knee
on a consistent basis. I hope this video was helpful for you. I hope we answered all the
questions about Hyaluronic Acid knee gel injections or viscosupplementation injections for knee
arthritis. If you have any other questions, drop them in the comments below. We have stories
to share, tell us if you got these injections and if they were helpful for you. We'd love
to hear about that. And don't forget to give us a thumbs up and subscribe to our channel
so that you don't miss out on our weekly helpful information. Thanks so much for watching guys,
and I'll see you in the next video. Bye