Intensive weight loss together with regular exercise did more to ease knee arthritis than exercise alone for overweight and obese adults in a new U.S. study.
Knee inflammation, pain and functioning all improved more among people who cut back on calories in addition to working out, researchers found.
The greatest benefits were seen among those who lost the most weight, and they tended to be the ones who combined diet and exercise.
"While both the exercise and the diet interventions separately were beneficial, the combination of the two was superior in virtually every outcome," Stephen Messier, who led the study at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said.
Extra weight is known to raise the risk of knee osteoarthritis, which happens when cartilage around the joint breaks down, causing inflammation, pain and stiffness.
One review found that being overweight doubles a person's risk of knee osteoarthritis, and being obese quadruples it (see Reuters Health story of April 15, 2011 here: http://reut.rs/dQl0ZZ). http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_140975.html
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