Walking beats Ibuprofen. Here’s why.

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]Exercise therapy produces pain relief comparable to oral anti-inflammatories and comparable to opioid pain medications. The difference, the drugs stop working when you stop taking them and their effects peak about 2 to 3 months and then they gradually fade.

[00:00:14]Now, exercise, it gets stronger the longer you do it. Let me say that again.

[00:00:19]Exercise is as effective as the medications your doctor prescribes for arthritis pain. And unlike those medications, it doesn't damage your stomach lining, doesn't stress your kidneys, and the longer you do it, the better it works. In a landmark study published in arthritis rheumatology, they followed people for 4 years. And they found that people who walked regularly for exercise had 40% lower odds of developing new frequent knee pain. And they showed slower progression of their joint space narrowing on X-ray, meaning that walking was actually slowing down the structural damage inside the joint.