Exercise is safe for the joints of people with osteoarthritis

In the short video above (3 minutes) hear our experts discuss how exercise is safe for the joints of people with osteoarthritis. Although the video discusses knee osteoarthritis, the same is true for hip osteoarthritis.

Scientific research has shown that regular exercise does not cause osteoarthritic changes in a joint and is not harmful for a joint’s cartilage. For example, for people with knee osteoarthritis walking up to 10,000 steps per day or doing recreational running does not result in joint damage or cause joint changes to worsen.

People with osteoarthritis may experience some symptoms from physical activity and exercise.

This typically includes temporary:

• muscle soreness
• joint swelling
• mild increase in joint pain.

These are common during, or straight after, exercise. It’s also normal to feel delayed muscle soreness a day or two after exercise, particularly after strengthening exercise. These symptoms are usually a normal response to exercise and don’t mean your osteoarthritis is getting worse. It makes sense that feeling pain from exercise can be worrying. So, we’ll talk in more detail about how to manage exercise-related pain this week in part 2.25 ‘Managing pain with exercise’. You’ll find this under the section ‘How to become more active with osteoarthritis’.