ORTHOPEDIC

Common Joints & Muscle Injuries

Your joints, muscles, and bones regulate your movements. When they are stretched beyond their capacity, they might get inflamed and injured, making normal movements painful. Any kind of injury to your musculoskeletal system can affect your range of motion and cause extreme discomfort when left unaddressed. 

In addition to sports injuries and road accidents, your muscles and joints can get inflamed for several reasons. It can be due to aging, arthritis, or obesity, which puts excess pressure on your joints. Whatever the cause is, you should see an orthopedic doctor in Navi Mumbai immediately to get your issue diagnosed and treated. In the meantime, let’s take a look at some common types of musculoskeletal injuries.

Joint and Muscle Injuries

Joint injuries can occur in your knees, elbows, ankles, and shoulders. Depending on the severity of the injury, the condition might limit your movements or make you completely immobile. Anything from falling down the stairs to car accidents can lead to joint injuries. The symptoms include redness, swelling, inflammation, weakness, limited range of motion, pain, and stiffness. 

Your muscles weaken as you age. They might also lose strength because of a sedentary lifestyle, lack of physical activity, or obesity. Muscle injuries occur when you overstretch or overuse the muscles for a prolonged period. Examples include indulging in tennis, golf, and other exercises that put excess pressure on your tendons and muscles.

• Knee Injury: Your knee takes excess load when you participate in sports or any strenuous physical exercises. Your cartilage can get torn easily, or there can be a fracture from falling or hitting a hard object. Knee injury is painful and might require surgery in some cases.
• Fractures: Fractures can occur on any joint, leading to several weeks of immobilization. Usually, they heal with an over-the-counter prescription, but some fractures might require surgery.
• Muscle Strain: Muscle strain occurs when you have overstretched or overused a muscle. It’s the small, invisible tear in your muscle fibers that may cause excruciating pain. This usually occurs on the shoulders, lower back, and neck. Sometimes, a serious injury to the muscles might tear the blood vessels supplying oxygen and blood to the specific muscles. This requires urgent medical care.
• Dislocated Joints: People participating in certain sports might experience joint dislocation, a medical condition in which the joints move out of their sockets. It’s important to visit an orthopedic hospital in Navi Mumbai immediately to re-align your joints.
• Back Injuries: Poor posture, strenuous physical exercises, or certain sports can hurt your back. The disc injury can be severe and might require several weeks of rest and physical therapy. Surgery is required, depending on the severity of the issue.

These were some common muscle and joint injuries that can develop either immediately from a sudden fall or gradually from muscle overuse. You must consult an orthopedic doctor before trying new exercises or putting any form of strain on your muscles. Gyming, cycling, running, and other physical activities should be performed only after you get approval from a doctor.

How an Orthopedic Specialist Treats Knee Pain?

The knee is made up of the tibia, patella, and femur, and has a supporting system of soft tissues such as cartilage, ligament, and muscle. When the knee joint gets damaged, it can impact function significantly. Without functional knees, you can’t stand, walk, or run.
Throughout your life, you may experience knee pain due to injuries or in your more advanced years, due to a degenerative disease called osteoarthritis. Knee pain can have many causes and a proper diagnosis is a critical step before receiving treatment. Acute knee pain can be addressed with rest and painkillers. Chronic knee pain has to be addressed with other treatments.

While an orthopedic doctor in Navi Mumbai can examine your knee and prescribe medication to ease pain, an orthopedic doctor is a specialist on the musculoskeletal system and can provide options for treating knee pain more effectively.

Treatment: Treatments will vary, depending upon what exactly is causing your knee pain.

Medications: Your orthopedic doctor in Juinagar, Navi Mumbai may prescribe medications to help relieve pain and to treat the conditions causing your knee pain, such as rheumatoid arthritis or gout.

Therapy: Strengthening the muscles around your knee will make it more stable. Your doctor may recommend physical therapy or different types of strengthening exercises based on the specific condition that is causing your pain.

Injections:
In some cases, your doctor may suggest injecting medications or other substances directly into your joint. Examples include:

• Corticosteroids. Injections of a corticosteroid drug into your knee joint may help reduce the symptoms of an arthritis flare and provide pain relief that may last a few months. These injections aren’t effective in all cases.

Surgery:

If you have an injury that may require surgery, it’s usually not necessary to have the operation immediately. Before making a decision, consider the pros and cons of both nonsurgical rehabilitation and surgical reconstruction in relation to what’s most important to you. If you choose to have surgery, your options may include:

• Arthroscopic surgery : Depending on your injury, your doctor may be able to examine and repair your joint damage using a fiber-optic camera and long, narrow tools inserted through just a few small incisions around your knee. Arthroscopy may be used to remove loose bodies from your knee joint, remove or repair damaged cartilage (especially if it is causing your knee to lock), and reconstruct torn ligaments.
• Total knee replacement: In this procedure, your surgeon cuts away damaged bone and cartilage from your thighbone, shinbone and kneecap, and replaces it with an artificial joint made of metal alloys, high-grade plastics and polymers.

If you are having symptoms in your knee, we encourage you to contact our office to make an appointment at our orthopaedic hospital in Navi Mumbai i.e. Mangal Prabhu Hospital, Navi Mumbai.

IS WEIGHT BEARING EXERCISES GOOD FOR YOUR AGING BONES?

Weight-bearing describes any activity you do on your feet that works your bones and muscles against gravity. When your feet and legs carry your body weight, more stress is placed on your bones, making your bones work harder. Weight-bearing exercise after young adulthood can help prevent further bone loss and strengthen bone. As you age the muscular and nervous system change and reduce the ability of your body to activate your muscles. But with the help of some physical activity and exercise this process an be slowed down considerably with orthopedic doctor in Navi Mumbai tips and suggested exercise.

These exercises include:

• Brisk walking
• Hiking
• Jogging
• Dancing
• Tennis
• Badminton
• Hopscotch
• Stair climbing

Higher impact activities such as jogging and jumping rope, provide more bone strengthening benefits. But with aging we lose the energy and strength to do such exercises as there are many changes that take place in our body like once we reach the age of 35, we start losing half a pound of muscle and gaining one ad a half pounds of fat each year. At 40-50, the bone mineral density declines. And as we age towards 70 our strength reduces by 20 to 40 percent. With age the musculoskeletal system (system that includes your bones, cartilage, ligaments, tendons and connective tissues) also changes. There is a decline in muscle fiber numbers and size and loss of efficiency of the cardiovascular system over time. This is a natural/biological process and we can not stop it from happening. And as we age our daily activities also decrease leading in decline of flexibility and strength. But if we keep ourselves active this process can be slowed down.

Exercises that can be done if you have following medical conditions:

• Osteoarthritis: If you have Osteoarthritis, you can involve yourself in walking, biking, swimming and some stretching exercises.
• Lower Back pain: Walking, biking, swimming and strength training.
• Osteoporosis: Walking, biking, swimming, hiking, dancing, treadmill, and racquet sports such as tennis and badminton.
• Total Joint Replacement: Walking, biking, swimming, and play tennis or golf.

Conclusion:

Weight bearing exercise to improve strength are good for people of all age. It can be hard for seniors to build up their muscle mass, but resistance training will help them do this. And if we keep ourselves active, we can prevent ourselves from many diseases and it gives us more energy and greater self-confidence, enabling us to embrace our later years with gusto and take consultation with orthopedic hospital in Navi Mumbai.