Dr. Joshua John-Ram SchacterDr. Joshua Schacter, DO FAAOS, is America’s Holistic Orthopedic Surgeon, with nearly two decades of surgical expertise.

Don’t Mask Your Joint Pain Heal Your Joints with Orthobiologics

20 Jun 2023 · 1 min

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Dr. Joshua John-Ram Schacter warns against routine steroid injections for knee pain, arguing they provide only short-term symptom masking while worsening joint health. He states steroid injections increase the risk of infection if a knee replacement is done within three months of the injection, and emphasizes addressing underlying contributors to joint pain (weight, deconditioning, exercise difficulty) rather than episodic treatments.

Questions this video answers

At least three months; the speaker says 'we really wouldn't want to do a knee replacement within three months of a steroid injection' due to increased infection risk.

They mask symptoms (short-term pain relief) and 'actually damag[e] your joint'—worsening the joint over time according to the speaker.

Chapters

We really wouldn't want to do a knee replacement within three months of a steroid injection, because we know that the steroid significantly increases your risk of infection after knee replacement. When we do a steroid injection, we're doing that to relieve the patient of pain. But just like everything else we do in modern American medicine, it's an episodic treatment. If you come in with a problem, we have a short term fix and we're just kicking the can down the road to try and buy you some time with relief. Well, the problem with that strategy is that, sure, we give you a little bit of relief of pain, but it's essentially masking your symptoms. It's not dealing with any of the other problems that can contribute to your joint pain, like unwanted weight gain, difficulty with exercise, deconditioning, all manner of problems that can contribute to your joint pain, and it's worsening your joint as you go. So every time you get a steroid injection, and not only does it mask your symptoms and give you a little bit of symptom relief, but it's actually damaging your joint as we do it.