The REAL Cause of Osteoarthritis (SHOCKING)

Over most of my medical career, we thought that osteoarthritis was almost entirely caused by wear and tear on your joints.

The idea was that you wear out the cartilage if you overwork your joints.

But it turns out we were ALL WRONG.

Researchers looked at the joints of people who recently died and compared them to human specimens from 50 to 100 years ago. And they also checked out samples from people that lived thousands of years ago.

What they found was shocking (and REVEALING).

The study found that even after controlling for things, like age and body weight, folks who lived before the 1950s had less than HALF of the arthritis of their knee joints as we do now.

Considering how sedentary our lives have become, we put far LESS wear and tear on our joints than our ancestors did. With that in mind, it’s HIGHLY UNLIKELY that osteoarthritis is caused by wear and tear alone.

So, what’s going on here?

Well, inflammation triggered by aspects of modern living, such as a diet high in ultra-processed foods, is undoubtedly part of the story. But I believe the BIGGEST factor is a lack of functional movement.

This means an absence of the kinds of movements that our hunter/gatherer ancestors would typically do during their day, such as sitting on the floor (instead of a chair), sleeping on the ground (instead of a bed), squatting, and doing physical chores from hunting to foraging for food.

These activities maintain muscle and tendon strength and allow a full range of motion for your joints.

And that’s critical because when a joint only has a partial range of motion (such as a hip that doesn’t fully extend because of prolonged sitting), it impacts how you walk.

Plus, it causes you to put weight-bearing forces over a much smaller area on the joint cartilage Ultimately, this is what leads to tissue failure in the joint.

That brings me to how we can AVOID this joint breakdown with three simple steps…

STEP 1 – Move MORE: You don’t have to hunt for your own dinner or sleep on the ground to get plenty of functional movement. Simply look for additional opportunities throughout your day to move more and engage your joints. Squatting, walking, reaching, and twisting your body doing everyday tasks all count.

STEP 2 – Get MORE Sun Exposure: Cartilage cells contain independent circadian clocks. Our modern habits that break all the rules of natural light exposure could cause some collateral cartilage damage.

Be sure to get a daily dose of sunlight and reduce your exposure to artificial light at night. In one large study, researchers found that sunlight exposure and vitamin D levels are associated with improved joint health on MRI.

Another showed that vitamin D helps slow the breakdown of the joints in people with osteoarthritis.

HOWEVER, supplementation alone has NOT been shown to slow the progression of osteoarthritis—which means the joint health benefits come directly from sunlight itself.

STEP 3 – Sleep MORE: We can’t discuss circadian rhythm and sun exposure without discussing sleep. A Korean nationwide population-based study found a significant increase in arthritis in women who got less than five hours of sleep per night compared to a healthy seven to eight hours.

Following theses three steps, along with maintaining a healthy weight, could prevent osteoarthritis from ever developing.

P.S. What if you’re one of the 30 million whose joints have already started to wear down? This breakthrough could help rebuild your joints in as little as 90 days.

Source:

Ding C, et al., “Serum levels of vitamin D, sunlight exposure, and knee cartilage loss in older adults: the Tasmanian older adult cohort study.” Arthritis Rheum. 2009 May;60(5):1381-9. doi: 10.1002/art.24486. PMID: 19404958.