Corticosteroid injections — a newly discovered downside

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Cortisone shots kill the pain for a while, but are they leading to more problems down the road? This new study is eye-opening.

Lift hard enough or live long enough, and you'll probably get a cortisone shot, technically a corticosteroid injection. Some doctors pass them out like candy for a variety of conditions:

  • Osteoarthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Tendinitis and Tendinopathy (Tennis Elbow, etc.)
  • Bursitis
  • Plantar Fasciitis
  • Carpal Tunnel Syndrome
  • Disc Herniation
  • Facet Joint Pain

The upside? Quick, but temporary, pain relief. The downside? Repeated injections may weaken tendons and increase future injury risks. Now, a new study shows that people receiving cortisone shots for arthritis show faster disease progression and more joint damage over time. Luckily, there are some alternatives.

The Study

In a nutshell, this study gathered up 210 people with knee arthritis and used advanced MRI scans to assess their joint health:

  • 44 got corticosteroid injections
  • 26 got hyaluronic acid injections
  • 140 were used as controls (no injections)

The participants who got the cortisone shots showed significantly more arthritis progression after two years than the hyaluronic acid group and the control group! The researchers found very clear evidence that steroid shots were linked to faster joint deterioration. On the other hand, hyaluronic acid injections seem to slow down arthritis progression.

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Should I Avoid the Needle?

Here's a quick rundown:

  1. Corticosteroid injections offer rapid but short-term relief, but have a lot of drawbacks. They work fast and substantially reduce pain, though.
  2. Hyaluronic acid acts more like a mechanical buffer or lube than a direct anti-inflammatory. It's a natural component of synovial fluid, and injections restore viscosity and improve joint function. However, pain relief is slower and milder.

An Alternative or Adjunct Therapy

Oral curcumin, particularly micellar curcumin, is shown in multiple studies to relieve arthritis pain and stiffness as effectively as NSAIDs but with fewer side effects. Clinical studies show that curcumin reduces pain and improves function in individuals with knee arthritis, and athletes/lifters suffering from the usual aches and pains.

The pain relief isn't as rapid as cortisone shots, but it's a safer long-term option for pain management and works especially well with hyaluronic acid injections.

However, not every curcumin supplement works. Standard curcumin and turmeric have low natural bioavailability. Combining curcumin with piperine enhanced absorption a little, but that's old technology. Today, we have micellar curcumin that's 95 times more bioavailable than curcumin with piperine.

Just make sure your curcumin supplement has "solid lipid curcumin particles" on the ingredient list, and you'll know you're getting the good stuff. Biotest Micellar Curcumin (Buy at Amazon) contains 400 mg per capsule of this type.

Biotest Micellar Curcumin

Reference

  1. Raynauld, Jean-Pierre, et al. "Protective Effects of Intraarticular Hyaluronan Injections on Cartilage Degeneration in Knee Osteoarthritis: A Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study." Radiology, vol. 234, no. 1, 2005, pp. 245–253. Radiological Society of North America
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