I’m having a constant pain in my knee since August even now 6 months after I stopped running. After some scans/echo’s etc they found it was a problem with my cartilage at the interior side of my knee.
I’m having now the following treatment: taking glucosamine + chondroïtine pills + 3 hyaluron injections to help the building process of new cartilage.
Is there someone familiar with this injury?
What is my chance of doing HIT running training again?
What will be the risk of this on long term?
What sports could I do to keep me some bit in shape? (can’t run/bike/swim without pain)
I fear from what I feel now that an operation will be necesarry because I have pain in my knee even without sporting and thats what troubles me the most :s
I’m not sure that Hyaluronic Acid rebuild cartilage, it is a great “lubrificant”.
In Europe (I don’t know in USA) there are much researches and therapy claims about a combination of Laser and Chondrocyte local injection for cartilage regeneration.
It is not possible to “build new cartilage”. Any cartiage damage is permanent, and usually progressive (meaning it will get worse over time).
Glucosamine/chondroitin and hyaluron are treatments for osteoarthritis (global wear of the cartilage surface). If you have a focal cartilage defect (a small, localized area of damage- far more likely if you are young and athlete), these treatments will be worthless. Prolotherapy will also be worthless for a cartilage injury. Articular cartilage does not heal or “rebuild” under any circumstance.
The only way to “repair” a cartilage defect is through certain surgical proceedures, the best of which is called autologous chondrocyte implantation. Even this does not truly repair the cartilage, though- it merely produces a ‘pseudocartilage’ to fill in the defect.
The horrible truth is that your knee will never be the same after you sustain any kind of cartilage damage. I am not saying that your running days are over but your knee will never be 100% again.
Well speaking as someone who has had a major knee injury and surgery, I can tell you my cartilage has not grown back yet. I did try Prolotherapy with a doctor here in Winnipeg and it helped but after awhile there were no improvements so I stopped going. I will tell you, not all prolotherapists are the same, as I found out after there were many things my doctor did not tell me or do. I would still like to try a certain doctor in the U.S. if I ever save up enough money. Are we all talking about the same thing here? There is menisci cartilage and there is articular cartilage. Prolotherapy claims to help grow back the meniscus, I am not sure about the articular cartilage. I had pretty much all of my medial meniscus removed (along with ACL graft) so I have the ‘bone on bone’ effect going on. Like I said though, prolotherapy did help considerably. I went from about 50% to 80%, where I have been stuck for about 3 years.
In this context I am referring to articular hyaline cartilage and not to meniscal fibrocartilage. The meniscal cartilage does have a small ability to heal. However, articular cartilage has no appreciable ability to heal.
“…the best of which is called autologous chondrocyte implantation”
With this kind of solution I’ve seen only bad result.
I can’t speak for your experiences, but the fact is that autologous chondrocyte implanation has demonstrated the best results of any cartilage restoration proceedure to date, producing a repair tissue that is most similar to the native articular cartilage. Certainly not everyone gets a good result, but that is true of any treatment. Frankly nobody promises that ACI will return an athlete to pre-injury fitness; it will just give you a better chance than any other proceedure.
Why, in your opinion, cartilage can’t heal?
Muscles can, bones can…tendons can…uhm…cartilage can’t…damn…it’s only a vascularization problem?
It has nothing to do with opinion… it’s just a biological fact that cartilage does not heal. And it’s not simply a ‘vascularization’ problem; there is a proceedure called microfracture which introduces a blood supply to the damaged cartilage, but it produces the wrong kind of tissue (fibrocartilage).
Everything I have said is FACT. I am not giving you anything that is a matter of personal opinion.
If you can refute my information, fine. Otherwise stop arbitrarily opposing everything I say just because you can’t accept the idea that a certain kind of injury is permanent.
A serious articular cartilage injury can potentially END your athletic career, or worse, cause you to become debilitated for life. Rather than deny this, you should take it to heart and do everything you can to prevent it.
By the way, if you knew of a way to heal cartilage, you wouldn’t be wasting your time arguing about it on the internet- you’d be making BILLIONS OF DOLLARS curing people of osteoarthritis.
I don’t remember the excact term the doctor said because it contained to much latin
I did today (for the first time in 7 months) some bit of sports… What I did was 3 warmup laps on the inside of the track on grass. And after those three my knees where hurting again, I still feel them. Well, I feel the pain slumbering all day like it’s waiting for me to do something intensive so it can brake out.
So my question is… what can I do to mentain some of my condition. Running & cycling wont work :s
I’m gonna rewatch the med ball video again and see what I can use from it to keep my body a bit in shape (Can’t do the circles around the body for example as going down my knees hurts). So I’m still searching for some way to do some form of “cardio” any hints?
