Will bone spurs disappear on their own?

In real life, bone spurs are a common bone disease for many people. Bone spurs can affect human health and easily lead to lesions in human joints. Bone spurs will not disappear on their own. You can take some calcium and pay attention to vitamin supplements to reduce the bone spurs, and pay attention to keeping the area warm.

Can bone spurs go away on their own?

Bone spurs are mostly caused by decalcification of the bone, which results in an uneven surface and local protrusions. They usually do not disappear on their own. You can try calcium supplements. After a period of treatment, the symptoms will usually be relieved.

What exactly is a bone spur?

Myth 1: Joint swelling and pain are bone spurs

Some people take the word "bone spur" literally and think that bone spurs are objects like iron nails or bamboo thorns that penetrate deeply into the tissue. This is wrong. Symptoms such as pain will only occur when bone hyperplasia is stimulated for a long time and aseptic inflammation occurs around the bone spurs.

Myth 2: The bigger the bone spur, the more severe the joint swelling and pain

Clinically, it is common to see some patients have bone spurs on both knees. The bone spur on one side is very large, but the pain is very mild or even nonexistent, while the bone spur on the other side is small but very painful. This is because large bone spurs do not cause sterile inflammation around the spurs, but small bone spurs do. Therefore, the size of the bone spur has no direct relationship with the degree of pain.

Myth 3: Exercising more will prevent bone spurs

This understanding is only half right. Experiments have shown that long-term overload exercise or labor can not only aggravate the wear of the joint surface, but also produce high stress on the joint, stimulate bone remodeling, promote the formation of bone spurs and accelerate subchondral bone sclerosis, and aggravate cartilage degeneration. On the other hand, appropriate and correct exercise and labor methods can prevent or treat osteoarthritis. Therefore, exercise and labor are a double-edged sword.

Myth 4: Specific medicine can eliminate bone spurs

The composition of bone spurs is the same as that of normal bone tissue. Some so-called special drugs that claim to be able to dissolve or remove bone spurs are pure fiction. Although bone spurs cannot be eliminated, the inflammation can be relieved. Once the inflammation is eliminated, the pain will be relieved. Therefore, the key to treating bone spurs is not to eliminate the bone spurs, but to "permanently" eliminate the inflammation caused by the bone spurs.

Myth 5: Surgery is better than conservative treatment

Although surgery can remove bone spurs, it should be limited to very rare bone spurs that compress nerves, blood vessels, and spinal cord, causing serious functional impairment and that are not responsive to conservative treatment. Because surgery itself is a form of trauma, it can cause aseptic inflammation in some patients and even stimulate faster bone growth. Up to 40% of patients will experience recurrence of bone spurs after 15 years. Therefore, surgical removal may not necessarily eradicate the disease.