Chronic knee pain seems like a fact of life as we get older. According to some estimates, roughly a quarter of people living in the United States currently suffer from it. If you’ve experienced it, you know how dramatically it can reduce your quality of life, transforming even a mundane chore into an excruciating ordeal. The treatments—painkillers, physical therapy, and at-home exercises—come with their own side effects and drawbacks. Now, according to a study in the journal Nutrients, a fiber supplement could offer at least a little relief.
The study, conducted by medical researchers from the University of Nottingham, focused on inulin (not insulin). This natural dietary fiber is primarily found in the roots of plants (like Jerusalem artichokes) and typically extracted from chicory.
Read more: “The Evolutionary Raw Deal of the Human Knee”
The team conducted a six-week trial with 177 adults diagnosed with knee osteoarthritis. They split the group into four cohorts: one that received only inulin treatment (20 grams per day); one that received only physiotherapy-supported exercise; one that did a combination of both; and a placebo group that took a sugar pill.
They found that inulin on its own reduced knee pain 1.1 points on average (on a 10-point scale), only physiotherapy reduced it by 1.6 points, and the combo reduced it by 1.7 points. Interestingly, unlike physical therapy, inulin also boosted grip strength and reduced pain sensitivity. Finally, the dropout rate amongst the inulin-only group was also lower compared to the physiotherapy-only group (3.6 percent versus 21 percent).
“Our findings suggest that targeting gut health with a prebiotic supplement is a safe, well-tolerated, and effective way to reduce pain in people with knee osteoarthritis,” study author Afroditi Kouraki said in a statement. “The very low dropout rate compared to the exercise group is also encouraging from a public health perspective—people were able to fit this supplement easily into their daily lives.”
So what’s going on?
The relationship between physical therapy and joint pain seems relatively straight forward, but how does the knee bone connect to the stomach… bone? According to the team, through the gut microbiome. Inulin is a prebiotic, which means its food for some of your beneficial gut bacteria. When these little bugs are fat and happy, they produce short-chain fatty acids like butyrate which has anti-inflammatory properties.
And that wasn’t the only biochemical boost they experienced. The participants in the inulin groups also got a natural rise in their GLP-1 levels, which have been linked to regulating pain pathways as well as muscle health. The team found that those who had higher GLP-1 levels also had stronger grips.
“The link we observed between GLP-1 and grip strength is particularly intriguing and points to a broader gut-muscle-pain axis that warrants further investigation,” study author Ana Valdes explained. “This could have implications not just for osteoarthritis, but for understanding how gut health influences aging and physical resilience more broadly.”
Knee pain may be an unavoidable part of aging, but the same can be said for taking fiber.
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