Laurie's Blogs.

Are you looking for a little bit of ammunition to help discuss weight loss with the owners of osteoarthritic dogs?  Well, I found a fantastic blog that does just that!  https://www.physio-network.com/obesity-knee-osteoarthritis-whats-the-link/

I’m going to dive right in with some of the information:

Obese individuals have a 30.3% higher lifetime risk of symptomatic radiographic knee osteoarthritis (OA) than people with a normal BMI according to Murphy et al (2008).  Toivanen et al (2010) concluded that the risk for knee osteoarthritis was 7 times greater for people with BMI > 30 to the control group with a BMI < 25. As well, Gelber et al (1999) determined that each 8 kg increase in weight as a young adult (aged 20-29 years) was associated with a 70% increase in risk of clinical knee OA more than 30 years later!

Yikes!  But there’s more!

The mechanisms behind the association between obesity, knee OA and knee pain are multifactorial, involving mechanical load through the knee joint, as well as the systemic inflammation caused by cytokine production from adipose tissue (Roos & Arden, 2016).

So, not only does obesity tend to cause abnormal mechanical loading of the joints (which can lead to cartilage damage) but also the fat tissues themselves create chemicals that induce a body-wide inflammation!

This could also potentially explain the positive association between obesity and hand OA, despite the hands not being weight-bearing joints (Carman et al, 1994; Oliveria et al, 1999).

Weight loss has been shown to be an effective strategy to reduce the risk and progression of knee OA, improve pain and function, and reduce certain inflammatory mediators.

Approximately 30% of knee OA is avoidable with the reduction of BMI (Zhang et al, 2010).  Even modest reductions in BMI have been demonstrated to produce great reductions in disease risks. A two-unit drop in BMI has been shown to lower knee OA risk by 50% (Felson et al, 1999). Similarly, Aaboe et al (2011) showed that for every 1 kg of weight loss, the peak knee load was diminished by 2.2 kg at a given walking speed.

Weight loss also seems to have a protective effect on cartilage loss. A recent study demonstrated that participants who lost weight over 48 months showed significantly lower cartilage degeneration, as assessed with MRI. This indicates that rates of disease progression can be lower in those who achieve greater weight loss (Gersing et al, 2017).

Brilliant information!  So, once you’ve convinced the owners that their dog will be less painful in their joints if they lose some weight, next you need to come up with a plan.

Essentially, less food (likely a snack diary is in order), perhaps a change in food (diet formulations), and simply get the dog moving (slow and steady to start) will all be useful tactics when used in combination.  Coming for therapy or exercise sessions can serve not only as treatment, but as motivation as well.  Often the hardest part is to motivate the owner.  So hopefully, armed with the research above, you can take step one in in helping to convince them that they need to try!