Hey, I’m Dr. Greg Pursley at PC Medical Centers in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. We are the only integrated medical clinic in the area providing therapy chiropractic care, and we have a nurse practitioner who provides natural injections that help your body heal. But yeah, there’s three ways to prevent this degenerative arthritis scale. First of all, let me define arthritis. Arthritis is inflammation of a joint. Arth stands for joint, itis stands for inflammation. Inflammation of a joint. Now inflammation of a joint can occur in two ways. Number one, it can be from an injury or a traumatic event. Let’s say you fell, you injured your joint, now it immediately gets damaged. It’s going to develop arthritis. You’re going to feel sore from that fall. And that joint can have inflammation in and around it from that fall. But the more common way is that a joint stops functioning properly.
This is a spinal joint example, here’s a knee joint example, two of the common things that we treat. But let’s say it stops functioning properly. Well, if it’s not working properly and you keep using it day after day, after day, after day, it gets damage that occurs, which develops inflammation. Inflammation in a joint was called arthritis. You got it. So arthritis can turn into degenerative arthritis, that’s what this is. Degenerative arthritis is when a joint goes from normal all the way down the scale to degenerative where the bone start growing together. See this is a body’s natural reaction to repeated damage. If the joint keeps getting damage over and over, and over, and over, then your body says, “It’s not working right, it shouldn’t be used.” So it tries to fuse it together. And that is a major problem. This is surgical. One of our missions is to prevent surgery on the joints of the body.
Because once you have a surgery, there is no going back. We’re not saying surgeries are necessarily bad. We’re just saying, if you can prevent it, wouldn’t you want to try to prevent it? All right. Back to my original question, three ways to prevent degenerative arthritis. Number one is through proper joint movement. Proper joint movement. What that means, if the joint is working properly, it will not degenerate. It will not create arthritis. Think about it this way. A lot of people come in, in their 60s and 70s, and they say, “Oh, it’s just an aging process.” And I ask them, “Are all the joints in your body, have they all been in there in your body the same length of time?” And the answer is obviously yes, you have over 200 joints. They’ve been in there the same length of time. The ones that aren’t working correctly are the ones that degenerate. They get arthritis.
Number two is you have to have proper muscle and tissue balance around the joint. Think about it this way. If the knee joint, all the muscles and tissues around it, which there’s a lot more than just this one, if all the muscles and tissues around it are not in balance, there’s no way the joint can actually work properly. So it forces it to move improperly, which then creates arthritis. If you have that happening over a long period of time, guess what? You get degenerative arthritis. I lost one of my joints. The third thing is nutrition. Now, nutrition and hydration go hand in hand. What that means is if you’re dehydrated, your joints cannot have the proper amount of fluid in the actual capsule. Your joints are a hydration-based unit. Hydration, water, there’s no blood supply inside the joint. So you have to have the right amount of fluid.
So movement prevents arthritis, proper muscle balance and tissue balance around the joint, and proper nutrition/hydration. If you have questions and if you have any of those issues going on, we can most likely help you. And if you want to know if we can help you, all you have to do is click the link, fill out the information, and we’ll contact you. We offer free consultations here at PC Medical Centers in Cape Girardeau, Missouri. Our mission is to improve the outcome of the patient without using steroids, meds or surgeries, because all of those focus on the symptom and not the function. We want the joint to work properly. If it works properly, it will not break down. We look forward to seeing you soon. If you know someone we can help, share this with them. If you would like to come in for a consultation, click the link. Talk to you soon.
Dr Greg Pursley aka Dr G.