Can Tai Chi Help Relieve Knee Joint Pain?
By admin on 2016-05-25

    Tai chi may work as well as traditional physical therapy for easing pain in people with knee osteoarthritis, a small study suggests.

    Knee osteoarthritis, a leading cause of pain and disability in older adults, occurs when flexible tissue at the ends of bones wears down. While it can’t be cured, physical therapy or anti-inflammatory medications are often prescribed to relieve pain and improve mobility.

    To see if tai chi – a Chinese meditation practice that combines deep breathing and slow, fluid movements – might be a good alternative to physical therapy, researchers randomly assigned about 200 people with knee osteoarthritis to try one of these options for three months.

People practise Tai Chi in Havana, January 23, 2015. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

    Because patients knew what treatment they received, it’s possible that preconceived notions about the potential benefits of tai chi or physical therapy may have influenced the changes in symptoms that participants reported, the authors note.

    The study was also done at a single academic medical center, making it hard to say whether the results would be similar in other settings.

    Even so, the findings suggest that tai chi may offer some relief to patients without the potential cost of attending physical therapy or side effects of medications, said Romy Lauche of the Australian Research Center in Complimentary and Integrative Medicine at the University of Technology Sydney.

    “Finding effective and safe interventions is a top priority,” Lauche, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

    “Any kind of exercise including tai chi may benefit patients by improving functional disability, and they also impact coping skills,” Lauche added.

     The controlled movements that are a hallmark of tai chi can be good for joints because they allow fluid in the joints to move in and out of cartilage, improving flexibility, noted Jean-Michel Brismee, a researcher in physical therapy and rehabilitation at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center in Lubbock.

    “Both tai chi and physical therapy should have the goal to educate patients in doing the healing movements at home daily,” Brismee, who wasn’t involved in the study, said by email.

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SOURCE: http://bit.ly/1Tm0kFV Annals of Internal Medicine, online May 16, 2016.