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Badminton champion Saina Nehwal has said that she may have to give up her career as she is battling arthritis. “The knee is not very good. I have arthritis. My cartilage has gone to a bad state. It is very difficult to push for 8-9 hours. How will you challenge the best players in the world in such a state? I think I will have to accept it somewhere. Because 2 hours of training is not good enough to play with the highest level of players and get the desired results,” she says.
Arthritis means redness and swelling (inflammation) of a joint, where two or more bones meet. There are more than 100 different types of arthritis and sportspersons may develop a severe form of it because of sustained load-bearing by the joints. “But arthritis is fairly common among people as it manifests itself differently in different people,” says Dr Yash Gulati, senior consultant, orthopaedics, joint replacement and spine, Indraprastha Apollo Hospitals, New Delhi.
How do we identify the kind of arthritis we might have developed?
In simple terms, you can divide arthritis into two forms, green flag and red flag. Green flag is the kind that happens with age and its allied wear and tear. This happens in the weight-bearing joints of the knee, hip, and spine. It destroys the cartilage layer at the ends of the bones, narrows the joint space and exposes the bones. It can cause bone overgrowth, spurs and become painful.
The red flag arthritis is what we call the inflammatory or rheumatoid, which starts at a much younger age. It mostly affects joints in the hands and feet, causing stiffness and inflammation. This needs to be diagnosed very early as now there are good drugs to cure it. If the joint is spoiled and badly damaged, then joint replacement surgery becomes necessary. Depending on the condition of your knee joints, you can even do partial or half-knee replacement surgery with excellent results. Now robotic surgery helps us with precision surgery and helps us put the joints in a better position.
What’s the kind of arthritis that athletes have?
This is called post-traumatic arthritis, which results from the overuse of a joint. Even when they wear good-cushioned shoes, rapid movement does impact joints and injures the cartilage. Usually sports therapists manage their performance intensity with scheduled rest to allow for repair of tissues, proper muscle alignment, stretching, strength training and conditioning.
Is there any protocol to manage arthritis and live with it?
The idea is to limit pain, inflammation, and ensure joint function.
1) Try and lose weight, that almost always alleviates pain.
2) Do not jump on hard floors, use shock absorbing shoes while exercising or playing. If you play tennis or badminton, then make sure you are doing it on a clay court.
3) Strengthen muscles around the joints so that they act like one chain. Flexibility exercises usually do the trick.
4) Cartilage-enhancing drugs are prescribed but they usually work only in the initial stages.
5) Stem cell or platelet rich plasma (PRP) injections involve harvesting platelets (tiny blood components that promote clotting and healing) from your own blood and injecting them into the affected joint area to regenerate the cartilage. However, this is not of definitive value and can only work in the early stages.
6) I recommend mobilisation exercises like swimming, walking, low-impact aerobic exercise and range-of-motion exercises. Stretching exercises may also help keep the joints flexible. Walking on the swimming pool floor, which eliminates gravity, is a very good routine for strengthening knees.
