Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common type of arthritis in Australia, affecting millions of people. If you’ve been told you have it, or you suspect your sore hip or knee might be OA, here’s what you need to know and what you can do about it.
Quick Link: GLA:D Program at Formotion Physio Osborne Park
What is osteoarthritis?
For a long time, OA was thought of as simple “wear and tear”, where cartilage (the smooth cushioning in your joints) gradually wears down from years of use. We now know it’s more complicated than that. OA affects the whole joint, including the cartilage, bone, and surrounding tissues. It involves low-level inflammation, and the joint breaks down faster than it can repair itself.
OA is a long-term condition, but that doesn’t mean you’re stuck with pain. Symptoms can improve a lot with the right care.
Joints actually need movement to stay healthy. Cartilage has no direct blood supply, so it relies on joint fluid for nutrition, and that fluid circulates when you move and load the joint. This is why rest alone rarely helps OA.
What affects your risk?
Some things you can’t change, such as your genetics, your age, and being female. Others you can influence:
Previous joint injuries
How your joints are loaded. Too little activity can be a problem, and so can very high-impact activity or physically heavy work.
Body weight. Extra body fat is thought to contribute to OA mainly through low-grade inflammation throughout the body, not just from the extra pressure on your joints.
What can you do about it?
The best first step for almost everyone with hip or knee OA is a combination of three things:
Education. Understanding your joint, what affects it, and how to manage flare-ups of pain.
Targeted exercise. Structured exercises that load your joint safely and build strength and control in and around it.
Weight management. Where relevant, reducing body weight eases both the inflammation and the load on your joints.
If those aren’t enough on their own, there are other options that may help some people, including walking aids, bracing or taping, pain relief and anti-inflammatory medication (tablets or creams), and hands-on treatments like massage, dry needling or heat and cold therapy. Your physio can help you work out whether any of these are worth trying.
What about surgery?
Surgery is a last resort for people who haven’t had enough relief from the options above. It can be the right choice for some people, and we’re not trying to scare you away from it. But it isn’t a guaranteed fix for pain or movement problems, and it carries more risk than other treatments.
It’s also worth knowing that exercise doesn’t stop once you’ve had surgery. Strengthening and movement are still an important part of your recovery and long-term results, and many people do better when they’ve built up their strength beforehand.
There are also emerging orthopaedic treatments that include injections or treatment of the nerves that cause your pain which may in some cases reduce the need for earlier surgery.
How we help at Formotion Physio
Our team can diagnose OA and build a plan around your goals. That usually includes:
A thorough assessment. We check how your joint is functioning with simple tests, such as how many times you can stand from a chair in 30 seconds and how quickly you can walk 40 metres. We also talk through what matters to you.
Education sessions. We’ll help you understand your OA and give you practical tools to manage it with confidence.
A personalised exercise program. We tailor exercises to improve your joint control, strength and mobility without flaring up your symptoms. From there, you can join our small group classes, which are one hour, physio-led, and run regularly throughout the week.
One way we do this is through GLA:D (Good Life with Osteoarthritis in Denmark), an internationally recognised program for hip and knee OA that we’re now offering at Formotion Physio. It combines education and supervised exercise over six weeks, with check-ins at 3 and 12 months to track your progress. Research on the program shows people experience less pain, rely less on pain medication, enjoy a better quality of life, and feel less need for surgery.
Keeping it going
Because OA is long-term, the benefits last when the exercise does. After your first six weeks, we’ll help you plan what comes next, whether that’s continuing with us or moving into one of our other classes.
The short version
OA is more than wear and tear. It’s a whole-joint condition, and it’s very manageable.
The best first-line treatment is education, exercise and weight management.
Surgery is a last resort, and exercise remains important before and after.
Sticking with exercise over the long term is the key to keeping pain down and doing the things you love.
If you have questions about OA, or you’d like to find out whether our program is right for you, get in touch with the team at Formotion Physio.