Massage for Osteoarthritis

Early detection of osteoarthritis (OA) and a proactive approach to managing knee pain is essential for the long-term health of your joints. Osteoarthritis is a progressive, degenerative disease. Over time, the condition worsens and symptoms can become more severe. However there is hope, the sooner you catch the disease the more treatment options available to you. Additional damage to the knee can be prevented or slowed down with the right medical and health interventions, enabling you to keep living the life you want without being slowed down by knee pain or limited mobility.

There are more non-surgical treatments available than ever before to stop or potentially even reverse the effects of osteoarthritis, such as Joint Fluid Therapy, knee braces, PRP Therapy, and Stem Cell Transplantation.

It may surprise you to know that massage can be used as a compliment to these treatments as a great way to treat the symptoms of OA, rather than trying to control the pain and swelling with medications such as NSAIDS.

A study published in 2012 by PLoS One found that patients experiencing pain from knee OA had significant improvement in their pain levels after 8 weeks of receiving a 1-hour Swedish massage each week.

Massage can benefit OA sufferers in multiple ways:

• Certain types of massage such as Swedish can help reduce the pain and stiffness associated with OA by impacting the nerve endings located around the affected area.
• Massage can help move extra fluid out of the surrounding tissue to help reduce pressure, swelling and pain.
• Relaxing tight muscles can help enable your joints to re-align; this allows your body to equally distribute weight on your joints.

You should always be seeing a licensed therapist, a massage from a loved may be relaxing but isn’t likely to help medically. There are a variety of massage types (Trigger point, Shiatsu, Reflexology, Swedish) so you may want to try a couple different ones to determine which works best for you.

If you have been struggling with a loss of mobility or have needed to change your lifestyle due to knee pain, Reflex’s non-surgical treatments may be what you need to get back to life. Take this short quiz to see if you are a good candidate for our program.