Bone and Joint Care

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5 Ways to Protect Your Knees as You Age

As one of the most crucial joints in your body, protecting your knee should be a priority. Your knees bear the weight of your body while making it possible for you to do tasks such as walking, jumping, climbing, squatting and dancing.

However due to that, your knee is prone to damage through wear and tear, injuries or many form of arthritis. Over time, most of us will experience knee problems at some point of our lives. But there are tips you can follow to minimize the impact of knee problems, their development and progression.

Be Active

Regular physical activity can help your knees by relieving pain, strengthening the muscles that provide support to the knees, reduce weight gain that puts excess strain on your knees, and improve balance to decrease your risk of falls and injuries to your knees and other joints.

Exercises such as yoga or those prescribed by a physical therapist are gentler and safer to decrease your risk of joint injuries while also promoting flexibility and a range of motion. You can also consider muscle strengthening or cardiovascular fitness exercises such as working out with weight machines, or walking and running respectively.

Maintain a Healthy Weight

Being overweight puts extra stress on your knees which increases cartilage wear and tear. Adipose tissues also produce and release chemicals that promotes inflammation. Hence, excess fat may be associated with various forms of arthritis involving inflammation such as rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and gout.

Treat Injuries Promptly

If you have injured your knees or other joints, treat them promptly to prevent long-term complications.

You can practice the RICE method to treat your injuries:

Rest: Rest after an injury to give your immune system time to start the healing process. Appropriate rest allows your body tissues to rebuild without new injuries and trauma interrupting the process.
Ice: Apply cooling therapy, such as ice or cold packs, to an injury. Cold causes your blood vessels to constrict and numbs the pain.
Compression: Compression means to apply gentle pressure to the injury, sometimes with a compression bandage or with a cloth. This can help control severe swelling and prevent the wound from reopening.
Elevation: Elevation involves resting your injury at an elevated level, above the level of your heart. This helps to slow blood flow to the injury, lower blood pressure and lessen bleeding at the site of the injury.

Practice Good Posture

Overtime, bad posture can place abnormal stress on your joints and lead to excess stress on your knee joints, leading to wear and tear overtime. Practicing good posture helps to decrease these stresses on your knees by helping to distribute the weight on your knees, reducing stress on your joints that contributes to discomfort and long-term damage.

Choose the Right Footwear

Choosing the wrong pair of shoes can exacerbate existing issues or even lead to new ones by not providing the right support for you as you move around. For example, although high heels are a fashion statement, they may be detrimental to your knee health by altering your natural body alignment by elevating the heel above the toes, increasing stress on your knee joints. Ill-fitting shoes, which can cause your foot to shift within it as you move, can also affect your gait and place strain on your knees.

Living With a New Knee

Though Total Knee Replacement (TKR) surgery is a fairly common procedure, it is a major surgery and recovery takes time before you can be totally adjusted to your new knee and start moving around as you wish. In this article, we ask Bernadine Lim, what goes on during rehabilitation and minding the new knee.
Read the story

Move well. Feel well. Caring together for your bones and joints means taking care of your range of movements and the quality of life you want. From exercise and nutrition, to attending to injuries and long- and short-term conditions, moving well can influence your daily routines, work and play.

Empowering Yourself with Knowledge

This resource provides information about cancer, including:

Importance of Bone & Joint Care: Understand the importance of maintaining your bone and joint health.
Common Orthopedic Conditions: Learn about the different types of common orthopedic conditions and their characteristics.
Key Risk Factors: Explore various modifiable and non-modifiable risk factors that may leave you susceptible to orthopedic conditions.
Ways to Improve Bone & Joint Care: Learn about lifestyle factors and preventive measures to minimize your risk of orthopedic conditions.

What is Bone & Joint Care?

Bone and joint care focuses on maintaining the health and function of your musculoskeletal system, which includes bones, joints, muscles, tendons, ligaments, and cartilage. It involves preventing, diagnosing, and treating conditions that affect these structures, such as osteoarthritis, osteoporosis, fractures, sprains, and strains. Good bone and joint health is essential for mobility, independence, and overall quality of life.

Importance of Bone & Joint Care

Mobility & independence: Healthy bones and joints allow you to move freely and perform daily activities without pain or limitations.
Pain prevention: Bone and joint problems can cause chronic pain that affects your ability to work, sleep, and enjoy life.

What Causes Orthopedic Conditions?

Heart disease is caused by a complex interplay of factors, including:

Non-Modifiable Factors: Age, gender, ethnicity family history, and inherited genetic mutations.
Modifiable Factors:
- Lifestyle: Diet, occupation, sports and physical activities, and poor posture.
- Health: Obesity, Prior injuries

Symptoms of Orthopedic Conditions

Symptoms of orthopedic conditions may vary depending on the type of orthopedic conditions. However, some general signs and symptoms include:

Pain in the affected segment of the bone or joint
Swelling and Redness
Joint stiffness
Limited range of movement
Numbness, tingling or weakness

Important Note: These symptoms may also be indicative of other health conditions. Speak to our Specialists today for proper evaluation and diagnosis.

Common Orthopedic Conditions in Singapore

Osteoarthritis is a degenerative joint disease that causes the breakdown of cartilage, the smooth tissue that cushions the ends of bones in joints.
Fractures happen when there is a break in a bone, which can be caused by trauma or osteoporosis.
Sprains & Strains, are stretches or tears of a ligament (sprain) and stretches or tears of a muscle or tendon (strain).
Back Pain can be caused by various factors, including muscle strains, ligament sprains, disc herniation, and spinal stenosis.
Carpal Tunnel Syndrome happen when the median nerve, which runs through the wrist, is compressed.
Scoliosis is a sideways curvature of the spine that typically develops during adolescence.

Improving Bone & Joint Health

Here are some helpful ways to improve your bone & joint health:

Eat a heart-healthy diet with an emphasis on calcium-rich food such as dairy-products and leafy green vegetables.
Get enough vitamin D which is essential for calcium absorption. You can do so by getting sufficient sunlight or from fortified foods and supplements.
Engage in regular physical activities by doing weight-bearing exercises such as jogging or stair climbing, muscle-strengthening exercises which build muscle mass and flexibility exercises such as yoga and stretching.
Practice good posture, avoid slouching and maintain proper posture while sitting and standing.
Manage existing medical conditions such as arthritis and osteoporosis through medication and lifestyle changes.

Mobility

Enjoy the right form of exercise at your preferred pace. Listen to your body and improve your everyday mobility with the movement solutions that suit you.

Learn about fall prevention in the elderly, hip and knee joint replacement, and nutrition information from our medical and allied health specialists.

Care

Get tips and takeaways for the benefit of your daily routines and activities from our orthopedic and allied health specialists for various conditions and treatment options.

Learn about conditions relating to shoulder and elbow, neck, back and spine, hand and wrist, foot and ankle, geriatric care, and sports injuries. Helping you with individualized care.