Simple tips for treating arthritis | Weight loss through balanced diet or diet alone keeps arthritis at bay

As per the recent research, it is revealed that losing weight by following a balanced diet and regular exercise can keep your knees healthy in the long run which can keep arthritis at bay.

It is important for the people who are at risk of osteoarthritis to keep an eye on the early symptoms of the disease and to take measures to treat arthritis as soon as possible.

Alexandra Gersing, lead author from the University of California, San Franscisco said that if cartilage is lost in osteoarthritis, the disease cannot be reversed. So the people who are at risk of arthritis in their early signs of the disease, it is crucial for them to slow the degeneration of cartilage since if cartilage is lost, it cannot be regenerated.

The study has shown that losing weight can slow down the cartilage degeneration in obese and overweight persons but it was not clear is method used to reduce weight can make a difference.

A team was formed and they made research on 760 men and women with a body mass index of greater than 25 from the Osteoarthritis initiative for over a period of 96 months in overweight and obese individuals who maintained stable weight and who lost weight using different regimens.

The patients had mild to moderate osteoarthritis or risk factors of the disease. They were divided into two groups – one group with 380 people who lost weight and another control group of 380 patients who maintained stable weight.

The weight loss group was further divided based on methods used for weight loss like diet and exercise, diet alone and exercise alone.

They used MRI method to quantify knee osteoarthritis before the beginning of the study, at 48 months and at 96 months. The study indicated that cartilage degeneration was significantly lover in weight-loss group compared to the control group over the 96 months.

But this finding was only observed among the patients who reduced weight through diet and exercise or diet alone. So this study revealed that by following exercise alone to reduce weight by obese or overweight persons is not beneficial to the arthritis patients and should also follow a diet regimen.

This study is presented at the annual meeting held at the Radiological Society of North America.