Joint Pain in the Younger Population

Yes. Chronicity is labelled at 3 months, with 6 to 12 weeks as the clinical boundary. A patient should start with NSAIDs, not regenerative therapy. Only if steroid injection has also failed to control the inflammation between 6 and 12 weeks should regenerative therapy be considered, and 3 months is the ideal timing.

Around 10 to 14 ml of blood is drawn from the patient into a kit-supplied vial containing heparin, then centrifuged to separate the platelet-rich plasma from the rest of the blood. This typically yields about 5 ml of PRP solution, which is injected as multiple pricks around the tendon or ligament rather than as a single injection, to achieve the best results.

Platelets contain multiple growth factors, including PDGF and TGF-beta, that promote healing through two mechanisms: increasing vascularisation of the target tissue and stimulating cellular regeneration. One group of factors increases local blood supply, while another increases cellular activity — together they drive ligament, tendon and articular cartilage repair.

For articular cartilage involvement, collagen type 2, often combined with Boswellia, promotes cartilage cell multiplication and needs to be taken long-term. For partial tears of ligaments and tendons — which are rich in collagen type 1 and 3 — separate collagen 1 and 3 formulations are more appropriate, since they support healing of that specific tissue.

Go in a graded way and know your own limits — the simple principle is Young's modulus: push a muscle or tendon beyond its elastic limit and it will fail. Many young patients doing heavy weights on a gym instructor's encouragement end up damaging their elbows and shoulders. Proper training for gym instructors would prevent a lot of this. That said, if instruction is proper and progression is graded, strength training in younger years does directly help maintain bone strength into old age.

Dr. Mahajan's masterclass identifies four real drivers: overuse and sports strain, sedentary desk-bound lifestyles, autoimmune and inflammatory disease, and near-universal nutritional deficiency.

Joint pain in this age group is often dismissed as minor, and that delay is what allows a treatable strain to progress into chronic, far harder to reverse joint damage.

The treatment ladder runs from physiotherapy modalities matched to the depth of injury, through a disciplined NSAID and nutraceutical protocol, to steroid injections when appropriate, and finally PRP or GFC regenerative therapy once a condition is genuinely chronic.

No. Steroid and regenerative therapy should never be given together, since one suppresses inflammation while the other depends on it having resolved.