Arthritis Relief in Rockville Centre, Long Island, NY
We cannot give you back the cartilage. We can very often change how much the joint hurts, how far it moves, and how much of your day it dictates, by changing what it is being asked to carry.
What Treatment Can and Cannot Do
Start with the part most pages leave out. Cartilage that has worn away does not regenerate, and no adjustment, laser or supplement changes that. Anyone telling you otherwise is selling something.
What is genuinely worth knowing is that the amount of wear visible on an X-ray correlates poorly with how much pain somebody is in. Plenty of people have significant arthritic change on film and function perfectly well; plenty of others have modest change and can barely walk. The difference between them is rarely the cartilage. It is how the joint moves, how evenly load reaches it, and how much the muscles around it have taken over.
All three of those can be changed, and that is what treatment here is aimed at. A hip taking sixty percent of your body weight because the pelvis sits rotated is wearing faster and hurting more than it needs to. Level the load and restore what movement the joint still has, and the same amount of arthritis produces considerably less trouble.
Osteoarthritis
The wear-and-load kind, and the overwhelming majority of what we see.
Osteoarthritis is the breakdown of the cartilage capping the ends of bones inside a joint, along with the changes that follow: the joint space narrowing, the bone thickening beneath, and small spurs forming at the margins. It develops over years, it concentrates in the joints carrying the most load, and it is what people generally mean when they say arthritis without qualifying it.
It is often described as simply the result of age, which is only partly true. Age is a factor; so is genetics, so is weight, and so is any previous injury to the joint. But the factor that gets least attention and responds best to treatment is distribution. Joints do not wear evenly by accident. They wear where load is concentrated, which is decided by alignment several links up or down the chain.
That is why the examination for an arthritic knee looks at the hip and the pelvis, and why the assessment measures weight distribution left against right rather than only looking at the joint that hurts.
Inflammatory arthritis is a different matter. Rheumatoid arthritis, psoriatic arthritis and the rest are autoimmune conditions requiring medical management, and they sit with your rheumatologist. We can often help with the mechanical consequences alongside that care, but we do not treat the disease and we will not pretend to.
Where It Shows Up
- Knees. The most commonly affected weight-bearing joint, and the one where decompression makes the biggest difference.
- Hips. Deep groin ache, stiffness putting on socks, and the limp that develops without anyone noticing.
- The low back. Facet joint arthritis, typically stiff in the morning and eased by movement.
- The neck. Where degeneration narrows the openings the nerve roots pass through and starts producing arm symptoms.
- Hands and thumbs. The base of the thumb in particular, which affects grip more than people expect.
- Shoulders. Often alongside rotator cuff damage rather than instead of it.
- Feet and big toes. Which changes how you walk, and so changes what the knee and hip above it are doing.
- The spinal canal. Where arthritic change has narrowed the space enough to make the legs heavy after a short walk.
How We Treat It
Gently, and with the emphasis on load and movement rather than on the joint surface itself.
Chiropractic Care
Restores what movement the joint still has and corrects the alignment concentrating load on it. Low-force instruments where a manual adjustment would be too much.
Learn MoreKnee Decompression
Takes load off an arthritic knee joint directly. For a lot of patients this is what postpones or avoids a conversation about replacement.
Learn MoreCold Laser Therapy
Reduces inflammation in and around the joint, which is the part of arthritic pain that actually responds well and quickly.
Learn MoreHydromassage
Warmth and pressure for the muscles that have tightened around a painful joint, with no manipulation involved at all.
Learn MoreThe bilateral gravity assessment is central to arthritis planning here, because it puts a number on the load imbalance that most arthritic joints are living with. See technology, and care for seniors for how treatment is adapted with age.
Serving All of Nassau County & Beyond
Rhino Chiropractic is based in Rockville Centre, and patients travel in from right across Long Island. These are a few of the communities we see regularly:
- LynbrookJust north of Rockville Centre, a quick and easy visit for Lynbrook families and commuters.
- East RockawayA short drive from our office, popular with patients along the South Shore.
- OceansideWe regularly see patients from Oceanside for everything from injury recovery to wellness care.
- Baldwin HarbourClose enough for easy, regular visits without a long commute.
- MalverneA neighboring community with many long-time Rhino patients.
- West HempsteadConvenient access for West Hempstead residents seeking relief close to home.
- FreeportPatients from Freeport travel a short distance for our full range of chiropractic services.
- Garden City ParkA quick trip for Garden City Park residents looking for personalized care.
- Garden CityWe're a convenient option for Garden City families and professionals alike.
- Long BeachServing Long Beach patients who want the same structural, root-cause approach closer to the South Shore.
- Island ParkA short drive brings Island Park patients into our Rockville Centre office.
Common at Your Age Is Not the Same as Untreatable
Come in and find out how much of what you are feeling is the arthritis itself and how much is what has grown up around it.
Frequently Asked Questions
No. Cartilage that has gone does not come back and we will not tell you otherwise. What can change is how the joint moves, how evenly load reaches it and how much inflammation surrounds it, and in practice that changes the pain considerably for most patients.
It depends on the joint and the degree of change, which is what the examination and, where warranted, X-rays establish. Where a manual adjustment is not appropriate we use low-force instruments, decompression or laser instead. Nothing is done before we know what we are dealing with.
Not reliably. The correlation between what appears on film and how much someone hurts is famously weak. That is good news, because it means the pain is being driven substantially by things that can be changed.
Not necessarily, and this is a common reason people come in. Knee decompression takes load off the joint directly, and for a number of patients it has meant deferring surgery. If the joint is genuinely beyond that, the examination will show it and we will say so.
Almost always yes, though possibly not the exercise you are currently doing. Joints are fed by movement and stiffen without it. What we will change is how the load reaches them, and you will leave with specifics rather than being told to stay active.