Now I know get those grumpy old guys with a limp

To me, there's nothing like it, I've cycled and that will probably be my fall back sport but it pales compared to running.

There is just no evidence that it (PRP) helps to regrow cartilage. For me it provided some pain relief in the short term, but honestly i think if you filled my knee cavity with 10w40 motor oil it would have provided the same benefit.

The meniscus recovery is all dependent on whether it is on the lateral side or medial. The lateral side of the knee joint only deals with about 15% of your body weight, so recovery from that is pretty easy. On the other hand the medial is about 85% so that makes recovery much more difficult.

Since tearing the medial meniscus in my right knee my stride is just a mess. The other parts of my body (lower back, other leg) end up compensating and they end up with their own issues.

You can do PT all day long, but if you dont have knee cartilage and you dont have a meniscus, you are going to have a hinky stride, and that shaky foundation shows up EVERYWHERE else.

“A lot of patients come in and they're told that their knee is ‘bone-on-bone’ and they need surgery. If you can bend your knee in any way, if you can bend it, if you can move your knee, it's not bone-on-bone regardless of what you've been told by the orthopedic. It is not bone-on-bone regardless of what you see on an x-ray.

“You can move your knee? It's not bone-on-bone, and if you can move it then we can regenerate the cartilage. We can do that, without surgery or drugs, through a program such as the one that we do here…

“If you've completely torn the ligaments of your knee, then you need surgery. It's that simple.

“We can do a lot of good work with the knees. The key to regenerating the tissue of the knee is to make sure that it gets enough blood and oxygen. Normally it gets blood and oxygen from movement. The problem is when you hurt, the tissue movement hurts so it doesn't get that movement, and therefore it can’t heal properly. So we like to do a treatment called “knee-axial-decompression”.

“And knee-axial-decompression therapy is where we take the knee joint and we very gently decompress the joint like this,and we
bring it open and close; we pump it like this, and we pump blood and oxygen in-and-out of that knee joint, in-and-out of the cartilage of the knee, and that causes the material to begin the process of healing. We can see this on X-rays; I'II put a link below, you can see before-and-afters…”

He said their therapy treatment includes use of Class 4 laser. Per AI research:

A Class 4 laser can be used for cartilage regeneration by stimulating the production of chondrocytes (cartilage cells) and collagen, which helps in the repair and rebuilding of damaged cartilage tissue, making it a potential treatment option for conditions like osteoarthritis where cartilage degeneration occurs; this is achieved through its high power output that allows for deeper tissue penetration and enhanced cellular activity within the joint area.

Key points about Class 4 laser for cartilage regeneration:

Deep tissue penetration:
Due to its high power, a Class 4 laser can reach deeper layers of cartilage, stimulating cellular activity in the affected area.

Chondrocyte stimulation:
Laser energy can trigger the proliferation and activity of chondrocytes, leading to increased cartilage production.

Collagen synthesis:
Class 4 laser therapy can also promote collagen production, which is crucial for maintaining the structural integrity of cartilage.

Pain relief:
Besides cartilage regeneration, Class 4 laser therapy is often used to manage pain associated with joint issues by reducing inflammation and improving blood flow.

Important considerations:

Safety precautions:
Class 4 lasers are considered high-power and require strict safety protocols due to potential risks of tissue damage if not used correctly.

Clinical research:
While promising, further research is needed to fully understand the efficacy of Class 4 laser therapy for cartilage regeneration in different clinical scenarios.

This^ sounds like something a chiropractor would recommend.

Here's the cold hard truth. There is no cure for knee arthritis other than knee replacement (personally I do not call that a cure.)

Unless this procedure is verified to show cartilage regrowth, meaning orthoscopic evidence, not just anecdotal self reported improvements from patients, then it all sounds like bunk.

Have you had anything done with your knee?

You can rehab it with physio most likely

I'd start with the myrtle routine , leg raises reverse lunge type stuff

In some cases, chiropractors have helped patients. Unlike a surgery, something like laser light therapy is not a quick fix that will show immediate differences in the joint, but there is info out there suggesting there is something to it, like at timestamp 5:14:

Try spending 6-12 months doing serious self rehab before you consider any surgery. PRP may be worth it if you can afford it and there is almost no physical downside. Look at "Knees Over Toes" guy on Youtube. Range of motion and stress at the far end of range is good. Do sideways walks with rubber band around your knees, deep lunges, squats, hops, etc. Even if it hurts some. Try some short uphill runs on grass (10-15sec) - this was godsend for me because the impact was low-ish, but it built some strength back.

Trust me, any surgery will take 6-12 months to recover from. But you may never recover, like me. Might as well try to heal naturally because surgery can do more harm than good.

My story :

I was running well and started having an achy knee - 49yr old. Kept running (idiot). One day, POP!, swells up like a grapefruit. PT a couple of months and I still could not walk on my knee properly. Ortho says gotta do surgery. 2nd opinion says same. Ortho does scope, meniscus repair (cut away so no fixing that now) and microfracture. I am ruined for life now.

Microfracture means he scraped away all the remaining cartilage in the damaged area and poked holes in the bone to make it bleed stem cells. This is the medial femoral condyle. The 85% weight bearing one! Well, the fibrocartilage did not grow so now I have ZERO cartilage. Knee feels loose and running hurts badly. Two docs have since told me that microfracture is a short term fix at best and is about a 50% chance of that. Even my surgeon told me it was a 50/50 shot AFTER the surgery. It was 75% before...

I can finally walk / hike after 3+ years of almost constant rehab including deep tissue massages, hydrodissection in the scar tissue areas that didn't heal right because I couldn't bear weight for 3 months. This was all out of pocket expenses. I do exercises nearly EVERY DAY for 3 years at lunch for 20+ minutes. It still aches but I am much more confident. I hiked Mt. Whitney in one day last summer - 22mi, 7000ft vertical. Hurt, but I did it and was OK a few days later.

Upshot is, Avoid surgery. Docs may believe they are helping you, but most don't see the patient more than 90 days after surgery so they have no idea if you ever really got better. So whatever they tell you about long term recover is likely based on studies they read, not their actual follow ups. Also remember that a surgeon makes 10 times the amount on surgery that he makes in the office so there is some bias there...

Good luck.

Old guy radio - totally get it about the weight gain. Thankfully, we aren't in lock down and you can cross train. The amount of calories to lose weight as a 60+ female is so low that it would, IMO, trigger a "starvation" calorie hoarding reaction. But if you can exercise at all, you can lose the weight. The weight started to come off when I could move and I could eat a bit more when I exercised.

My advice - MOVE every day that you would normally run. Do whatever doesn't hurt your knee. Pool running will not make you into a lean, mean running machine, but it will burn some calories, use some muscles and honestly, make you feel/sleep better. (I once aqua-jogged 1 hour every day for 10 weeks - totally sucked, but I didn't lose as much fitness as I did when i couldn't do it).

See a PT and have him/her proscribe exercises to strengthen the muscles supporting your knee (hip, core, ankle, calf). Likely there is some connection between body weaknesses and knee pain.

Go to the gym and work on everything else that doesn't hurt. Upper body, core, etc. You could do side planks, fire hydrants, hip raises, clam shells, dead bug, etc at home. Your PT can guide you, or a personal trainer - these will all make you a better runner when your knee is better. You'll also feel better about yourself when you can see that you are getting stronger.

I started following a dynamic stretching program (an app) last year. I don't know how much it is helping my recovery, however, it's been pleasant and I feel more flexible. YMMV. I've also been doing exercises from Pete Egoscue's book Painfree. Again, don't know how useful, but hasn't hurt.

I miss the days of just running (though I always ran better when I lifted twice a week), but I'm willing to do almost anything to get to where I'm running well again. (I did 7 miles twice in the last week!!).

Good luck!

The laser might help with the symptoms of knee arthritis, there also might be a big ol dose of Placebo Effect (which really doesn't matter as long as the person feels better.)

But what is NOT happening is regrowth of knee cartilage.

Anything marketed as regrowing knee cartilage is just snake oil pitched to a very desperate population.

Think about how greedy health insurance companies are, now do you think for one second if they could just have people get a laser or take a pill they wouldn't do THAT vs knee replacement surgery?????

I think a case could be made, regarding your last statement, just the opposite, that certain stakeholders within the healthcare industry would NOT want to see success from less-invasive, less-expensive alternatives to that of surgery.

Here is a link with another view on treatment options, depending upon how severe the cartilage breakdown is, a ‘keyhole’ surgery can be used to perform local transplantation:

Yeah I figured someone would assume a Vast Orthopedic Conspiracy, but if there really were a way to take a pill and regrow knee cartilage, the potential windfall to the drug company would be a HUGE money maker.

I'm just not buying the conspiracy.

Right now there just isn't any drug or treatment that can do what we all want.

So now negative Nelly is moving the goal posts from laser light therapy (which has demonstrated efficacy in some studies) to a just swallowing a pill?🙄

Have you tried treading water rather than swimming? When I tread water, my heart usually hits around 96 bpm, very close to my heart rate when walking briskly, whereas when I swim, I'm usually in the 115-140 bpm range. I suddenly have a knee problem and have turned to treading water rather than swimming to avoid pushing off any pool wall with my tender knee. I usually get in a continuous 65-80 minutes of treading water and feel it's decent conditioning.

My knee feels much better but not ready to run.

Supposed to get two more PRP injections, I'll way it out after seeing how knee responds.

I've gone down the Reddit rabbit hole, anyone heard of "Wolverine Stack"?

It's a combination of BPC-157 and TB -500, which I know nothing about but am doing research

I've heard of it. I think it's just a fancy way of saying "take BPC-157 and TB-500 at the same time" because they work on different pathways and you get more benefit than using either by itself.

While skimming YouTube, I saw a guy giving himself an injection of BPC-157 in the knee, but he was a younger guy and I don't remember what his knee problem was because I only saw a snippet of the video before moving on to something else. With some diligence you should be able to track it down on YouTube. Best of luck and if you try it, let us know how it works.

BPC-157 and TB-500 (and all the other injectable peptides) are banned by WADA. Still, you're obviously a long way from competing and an injection is a lot less risky than a knee replacement. At this point, you need to think about your long term wellness and your ability to walk normally for the rest of your life. I'd want to exhaust all of the nonsurgical options before going under the knife. You never know how that is going to work out.

But before you do that, look into Synvisc or one of the other synthetic hyaluronic acid injections as I suggested earlier in this thread. It's not banned, it worked for me, and it's covered by Medicare.