Tag Archive for: cortisone injections

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Cortisone Shots for Knee Pain? Why You Should Think Twice.

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Knee pain can be incredibly disruptive – turning simple, everyday activities like walking, climbing stairs, or even standing up from a chair into painful challenges. In search of quick relief, many people turn to cortisone shots. By targeting inflammation in the knee joint, cortisone injections can temporarily ease pain and swelling, making them an appealing option when you’re hurting.

But cortisone shots are just that – a temporary fix. And they come with significant risks and downsides that are often overlooked. Let’s take a closer look at why relying on cortisone injections may not be the best long-term solution for your knee pain – and what you can do instead to find natural, healthier, and lasting relief.

The Problems with Cortisone Shots:

1. Temporary Relief Without Addressing the Root Cause

Cortisone injections can offer pain relief that lasts for weeks or even months – but they don’t address the underlying issue of your knee pain. Instead, they mask your symptoms, allowing conditions like osteoarthritis, tendonitis, or mechanical imbalances to quietly worsen over time. By simply numbing your knee pain, cortisone shots act as a band-aid – covering up the real problem while harmful movement patterns and joint stress continue unchecked. This can eventually lead to more serious, long-term damage without you even realizing it.

2. Risk of Joint Damage

Since cortisone injections only offer short-term relief, many people end up getting them repeatedly. But over time, frequent cortisone shots can actually do more harm than good – leading to cartilage breakdown and weakening the tendons and ligaments around your knee. Research shows that repeated cortisone injections can accelerate joint deterioration, increasing your risk of needing knee replacement surgery down the line. This is especially concerning for active individuals who want to stay mobile, avoid major surgery, and protect their joint health for the long run. Many people aren’t aware of this – so it’s important to know the risks.

3. Disrupts Natural Healing

Inflammation, while painful and uncomfortable, is a vital part of your body’s natural healing process. It increases blood flow, delivers nutrients, and recruits immune cells to repair damaged tissue. Cortisone injections suppress this natural inflammatory response – easing pain and swelling temporarily, but at a cost. By interfering with inflammation, cortisone limits the delivery of key nutrients and healing cells needed to repair cartilage, tendons, or ligaments. Over time, this leaves your knee joint and surrounding tissues weakened, making full recovery harder to achieve. When knee inflammation does get out of control, it’s far better to choose natural healing accelerants that support your body’s repair process – rather than disrupt it.

4. Potential Side Effects and Complications

As with any injection or invasive procedure, cortisone shots come with potential risks, including infection. Other side effects can include increased blood sugar levels, skin thinning, and changes in pigmentation around the injection site. While these risks may seem minor, they deserve serious consideration – especially when the relief they offer is only temporary. Over time, repeated cortisone use increases the likelihood of experiencing these complications. It’s important to ask yourself if short-term relief is worth the growing list of potential long-term consequences.

What to Try Instead of Cortisone Injections:

When it comes to knee pain, I always advocate for natural and effective alternatives that not only alleviate discomfort but also promote true healing. Here are three proven methods that address the root cause of knee pain rather than just suppressing symptoms:

1. Regenerative Shockwave Therapy

Shockwave therapy is a non-invasive treatment that uses acoustic sound waves to stimulate the body’s natural healing processes. By creating micro-traumas in the affected tissues, shockwave therapy boosts blood flow and encourages tissue regeneration. This treatment has been shown to improve mobility, reduce pain, and help with conditions like calcific tendonitis and osteoarthritis. Unlike cortisone injections, which only mask symptoms and can contribute to tissue breakdown, shockwave therapy actively supports healing and long-term relief. When combined with EMTT (Electromagnetic Transduction Therapy), the effectiveness of shockwave therapy is further enhanced – EMTT penetrates deeper into tissues, increases cellular activity, and accelerates the healing process, giving you even faster and more lasting results.

2. Dry Needling for Muscle Imbalances

Dry needling is a highly effective technique for targeting muscle tightness and trigger points around your knee joint. By inserting thin needles into specific areas, this therapy helps release muscle tension, improve circulation, and restore proper function. Dry needling is particularly beneficial for individuals suffering from tendonitis, chronic stiffness, or muscular imbalances that contribute to knee pain. It encourages natural healing by allowing muscles to function more efficiently, reducing strain on your knee joint.

3. Working with a Mechanical Knee Pain Specialist

A mechanical knee pain specialist is trained to analyze movement patterns and pinpoint the underlying causes of your knee discomfort. Unlike general healthcare providers who may prescribe pain medications or generic exercises, these specialists take a customized approach – identifying joint misalignments, muscle imbalances, and faulty movement patterns to develop a personalized rehabilitation plan. They assess how the entire body contributes to knee mechanics, ensuring all contributing factors are addressed. This comprehensive, root-cause approach not only restores knee function and prevents future pain but also leads to more effective, lasting results compared to the temporary relief offered by cortisone shots.

A Smarter Path to Knee Pain Relief:

While cortisone shots may seem like a convenient and quick option, they do little to promote true healing of your knee pain and can actually cause long-term harm. Natural treatments – such as regenerative shockwave therapy, dry needling, and working with a mechanical knee pain specialist – offer a more effective and safer path to knee pain relief. Instead of masking pain, these alternative treatments address the root cause, restore function, and help prevent future injury – giving you real, lasting relief.

Is running bad for your knees?

Movement is medicine (when prescribed properly)

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I have a confession to make. A few months ago I hurt my own back.

Yes, you read that correctly, the back pain expert injured her own back! I preach this ALL the time to my clients, but one of the reasons I’m so passionate about helping people with back problems is because the treatment is not cookie-cutter. But once we find what works for you, physical therapy is so effective and rewarding.

In my case, I was able to use very specific movements to get rid of my back pain, and then start focusing on strengthening exercises to keep it gone. Don’t get me wrong, there were moments when I wanted to call my doctor and ask him for pain pills, and even the idea of an injection crossed my mind once or twice. But because I keep up with the research, I know that pills and injections really don’t work well for long-term results. Aside from the many potential complications and side effects, quick-fix treatments tend to mask your pain and keep you from doing the real work that is necessary to keep the problem from recurring in the future.

At CJPT & Pilates, long-term solutions are the only thing we are interested in. We believe that movement is medicine.

For all musculoskeletal injuries, including back pain, the research shows that movement and exercise really is the best course of treatment in about 80% of all cases. OK, I know what you’re thinking. If it were that easy, why can’t you just go to the gym, to yoga, or follow an exercise video at home to get rid of your own back or knee pain?

It’s because although movement IS medicine, it only works when prescribed for you properly.

Let me explain.

I’m working with a gentleman right now who’s had back pain for over a year. It started after a car accident. He’s tried regular physical therapy, chiropractic, steroid injections and radiofrequency ablation. None of it worked. He feels good when he exercises and moves around, but the pain always comes back.

When he came to see us, the really interesting thing I noticed about his back was when he put himself in certain positions, he would stand up and literally be crooked. His spine would shift to one side, and become very painful and stiff. In the PT-world we call this a lateral shift, and it’s a sign that indicates he likely has a bulging disc. The great thing about a bulging disc is that they tend to respond very well to corrective movements. Once we know what movement “fixes” you, we can prescribe it to you. This gentleman can now make himself straight and get rid of his back pain in under a minute. Of course the goal is to get him to the point where he no longer needs this corrective movement, but for now, it quite literally is his medicine.

I think the reason more people don’t use this approach is because it requires a little bit of work, and you don’t often see the results immediately. When you get an injection, or even take a pill, the pain is gone in a few hours and it will often stay gone for a period of time without you really needing to do much. With movement, you have to stick with it and do it correctly for it to work. And although you can get an immediate reduction in pain from the correctly prescribed movement, it takes several weeks for it to start to stick and produce long-term relief.

But here’s the best part about using movement as medicine — it’s natural, there are no harmful side-effects, and you can do it completely on your own.

If you’ve been suffering in pain for awhile and tired of using pills or quick fixes to manage your pain, sign up for a FREE Discovery Session with us to find out if movement can be your medicine instead! You can also check out our free back pain guide right here.

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Steroid injections may do more harm than good, research shows

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Have you been told you need to get a cortisone injection? Have you already tried them more than once? 

Research is now showing that cortisone injections may hurt more than help in the long run! 

The results of a recent study from Radiology has raised concerns in the medical community about potentially adverse effects on joints following corticosteroid injections. These injections are commonly used to treat arthritis, especially osteoarthritis of the hip and knee. The researchers in this study observed patients who had previously received steroid injections and found that some of the patients exhibited further joint damage on medical imaging tests. According to the original article, these patients presented with “accelerated OA [osteoarthritis] progression, subchondral insufficiency fracture, complications of osteonecrosis, and rapid joint destruction, including bone loss.” 

The joint issues that can be triggered by cortisone injections don’t just show up right after the procedure — which makes it easy to see the steroid shot as a quick fix with no drawbacks.

And it’s true that there are usually no short-term side effects. However, when it comes to your joints, it’s all about the long game. And it’s worth noting that an analysis from the Cochrane Review in 2015 found that the benefits of steroid injections usually wear off after about six months…  meaning it’s a temporary “band-aid” solution to a bigger problem — a band-aid with the potential to result in permanent degradation of your joints!  

Arthritis is an issue we see all the time in our physical therapy practice, and that’s why patient and physician concerns with steroid injections are so relevant to us. Many of our clients have had injections suggested to them or have gone through with the procedure but not experienced any long-term healing. In many cases, this can be an overly simplified answer to the very complicated question of individual pain. Physical therapy, on the other hand, isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution. Our treatment model is entirely based around addressing the root cause of your pain instead of just providing temporary relief. Plus, we’re all about keeping your treatment non-invasive, movement-based, and entirely customized to YOU. 

If you’ve been told that you need a cortisone injection in your back, knee, or shoulder, think twice and get informed about other options!

If you’d like a NATURAL route to pain relief — and one that will make you more mobile and active at the same time — come talk with us! You can even schedule a FREE 30 minute Discovery Session with our Portsmouth, NH physical therapy specialists right now — no strings attached.