Cyndi: I’m sure many of you out there feel pain every single day, but just because you do, it doesn’t mean you can’t have it fixed. Even when it comes to a joint that often hurts, your knees, your hips, you name it. Dr. Rudy Gari from Florida Pain Relief Group joins us now to tell us what can be done about it. Dr. Gari, I think a lot of people at home are going, “That’s me, I’m half pain. When I bend down and do a knee bend, I can hear my knees. Is that normal?

Dr. Gari: No, it’s not normal. It’s something that’s called crepitus.

Cyndi: Crepitus?

Dr. Gari: Crepitus. And crepitus means that you have an inflammatory process, some sort of inflammation going on in those joints. It’s not a normal process. We have to examine and see what’s going on with it.

Cyndi: Can you help?

Dr. Gari: Yeah, absolutely.

Cyndi: Okay, good.

Dr. Gari: Yes, we can.

Cyndi: What about people who get symptoms of aches in their joints when there’s a weather system happening? What is happening there?

Dr. Gari: Well, what’s going on is that, I like to say that my patients are the best weather forecasters because they will tell me when it’s about to rain. Because they can actually sense, their pain increases, because the change in the atmospheric pressure affects the joint pressure that you have. We can sense that. So you know, normally we don’t, but if you have an inflammatory process in your joints anywhere, that becomes magnified significantly when the atmospheric pressure changes. So, humidity and a lot of that really tends to affect people that are in chronic pain a lot.

Cyndi: And you have some really innovative ways to help people with this inflammation, right?

Dr. Gari: Absolutely. What we do is, we first determine what’s going on, what’s causing that inflammation. We wanna get to the root of the problem. You know, what can we do? Sometimes it’s just arthritis, sometimes there may be some sort of a mass that can be removed, sometimes it’s trauma. But most of the times, almost always, it’s some sort of inflammatory process that’s causing that. And we get to that whether it’s through medication, through a pill, through an ointment, through a cream. Sometimes just a simple injection into the joint gets rid of it. Sometimes the joint in and of itself is so arthritic that we have to try to redevelop that joint. And one of the things that we perform as well is called regenerative medicine, where we can actually put stem cells, allografts, very innovative things, that can actually redevelop some of those tissues that you have in your joints.

Cyndi: That’s great. So it’s not necessarily a life sentence, it’s something that can be treated.

Dr. Gari: There’s a lot of exciting things that’s going on in medicine today, and it’s very exciting, what we can do.

Cyndi: What about for people who wake up in the morning with pain and stiffness in their joints, is there anything you can do for that or is it just a matter of getting up and stretching? Or is there more to it than that?

Dr. Gari: Well, the reason why you have joint pains in the morning is because your temperature drops. So when your temperature drops during sleep, and that also causes your joints and so forth to become a lot more stiff. So, when you get up, take a hot shower and so forth, that really increases, and you get less stiff and you have a lot less pain.

Cyndi: What about for people who have nagging, reoccurring pain? Is surgery ever the answer, or not?

Dr. Gari: Well, usually, the answer is no, but sometimes there might be something going on where you need an operation. But most of the times, you don’t need an operation. Most of the times, it could be something like physical therapy, a pill or medication, sometimes a little simple injection. Sometimes, there’s something that’s called the hydraulic membrane which, it’s like a lubrication into your knees that we can inject into your joints that can last several months. Sometimes there’s stem cells, there’s all kinds of different options.

Cyndi: Well, that’s good to hear because I know a lot of people would rather try every option before they have to go under the knife. Dr. Gari, thank you very much. You can contact the Florida Pain Relief Group to schedule your same-day appointment. We’ll be back with more “Daytime,” so don’t go away.