With age, the bones and cartilage in the joints begin to wear out and become brittle. Unfortunately, nothing can be done about it. But often this happens with young people. Early wear can occur due to high physical stress on the joints or the special structure of the body. Such changes can also occur with hyaline cartilage of the knee joint. It is possible to deal with such an ailment, but this is a very time-consuming process.
What is cartilage
Between the bones in the joints is a layer called cartilage. Its nature has created so that while walking or with any other movements, the bones do not rub against each other. If there weren’t this softening tissue, then the bones would wear off very quickly. Moreover, any movement would be given to a person with special difficulty and would be accompanied by pain.
Also inside the joint is synovial fluid, which acts as a lubricant. This substance protects the joint from destruction and supplies the cartilage with nutrients.
Collagen is responsible for the strength and elasticity of cartilage, and it also does not allow them to deform. Cartilage (due to collagen) can easily take any form, and then easily return to its original position.
The composition of the cartilage also includes a component that makes up most of the human body - it is water. This component supports cartilage during exercise and is responsible for making it elastic.
Types of cartilage
Cartilage can have different physical qualities. Depending on this, they are divided into the following types:
Hyaline cartilage
This type of cartilage is located in the knee joint and belongs to the first type of cartilage. It differs from the other two in that it contains fewer fibers and cells than others. This cartilage is a translucent tissue.
This type of cartilage begins to form in the skeleton when the child is still in the embryo stage. In the skeleton of an adult, hyaline cartilage forms a thin tissue covering the surface of the joints. Sometimes a phenomenon such as thinning of the cartilage is observed. It can be diagnosed at any age.
Thinning of Hyaline Cartilage: Causes
In the knee joints, this cartilage is thinned mainly due to constant movement. It is located between two knee bones, and if for some reason the human body begins to produce less collagen and synovial fluid, then the functions of this cartilage are lost.
Also, the reason that the hyaline cartilage is thinned may be:
- Injury. This often happens with people who play sports or hard physical labor. During exercise, chipping of a piece of cartilage can occur. Such a spall may be insignificant and not affect the functioning of the joint, but there are also quite significant injuries requiring long-term treatment in a hospital.
- Wear. With large loads on the knee, cartilage tissue wears out. She begins to crack and soften.
- Arthrosis With this deforming joint disease, cartilage is erased. If you diagnose an ailment at the beginning of its development, then with the help of various methods of treatment they can be restored. But the problem is that at an early stage, the disease is almost asymptomatic.
The process of cartilage wear itself is not accompanied by pain, so it is quite difficult to determine the pathology.
Norm and thickness violation
It is believed that normal healthy cartilage, which is located in the knee, should have a thickness of about 6 millimeters. When thinning, its thickness may decrease by half or more. But this figure may be different, it depends on the structure of the human skeleton.
The first sign that hyaline cartilage is thinning is the appearance of swelling of the knee joint. The tissue located between the bones loses its evenness and decreases in size. This process can be determined thanks to MRI and sound examination.
Cartilage Wear Stages
There are three stages to the destruction of hyaline cartilage:
- First stage. During it, with the help of drug therapy and physiotherapeutic procedures, it is possible to suspend the destruction process and restore cartilage.
- Second stage. Cartilage can only be restored by surgery.
- The third stage is the last. Cartilage is completely depleted. There is only one way out of this situation - endoprosthetics. When walking in the knee of the patient there are strong pain.
How to recover
Chondrocytes are responsible for the formation of cartilage. They can repair cartilage by creating new cells. But there are very few of them in this place - this explains the fact that the restoration of cartilage lasts a very long time. Therefore, if a person was injured and the cartilage began to decrease rapidly, then it cannot be restored using natural chondrocytes.
Experts believe that the division of chondrocytes can be increased by increasing growth hormone in the human body. In this case, the cells of the cartilage tissue will recover twice as fast.
It is important to know that healthy, sound sleep helps increase growth hormone. Also for this purpose use physical training. In addition to hormone production, they also contribute to the restoration of a damaged joint.