Changes to our joints, bones and muscles are often attributed simply to ageing ‘wear and tear’, but is that true? From creaky joints to hip and knee replacements, physiotherapist Rod Grof takes us through the top musculoskeletal risks as we age, while Logie-winning actor John Wood shares his own health story, and how health impacts his life.

About the episode - brought to you by Australian Seniors. 

Join James Valentine as he explores the incredible stories of Aussie characters, from the adventurous to the love-struck. Across 30 inspirational episodes, Life’s Booming explores life, health, love, travel, and everything in between.

Our bodies surprise us in ways we never thought possible as we age, so in series five of the Life’s Booming podcast – Is This Normal? – we’re settling in for honest chats with famous guests and noted experts about the ways our bodies behave as they age, discussing the issues and awkward questions you may be too embarrassed to ask yourself.

Acting veteran John Wood is no stranger to treading the boards. From Rafferty’s Rules and Blue Heelers to comedy revue Senior Moments and Ensemble Theatre’s newest show, The Great Divide, John has been entertaining audiences for more than 40 years.

Rod Grof is a Melbourne-based physiotherapist and principal of Platinum Physio. Experienced in treating a range of musculoskeletal injuries and conditions in clients across the lifespan, Rod helps his older patients to live more active lives, with less pain.

 

If you have any thoughts or questions and want to share your story to Life’s Booming, send us a voice note - lifesbooming@seniors.com.au.

Watch Life’s Booming on Youtube

Listen to Life's Booming on Apple Podcasts

Listen to Life's Booming on Spotify

Listen to Life's Booming on Google Podcasts

For more information visit seniors.com.au/podcast.

Produced by Medium Rare Content Agency, in conjunction with Ampel Sonic Experience Agency

 

Transcript:

James Valentine: Hello and welcome to Life's Booming Series 5 of this most excellent and award winning podcast. I'm James Valentine and in this series we're going to ask the question, is this normal? I mean, as we age, stuff happens to us. Our bodies change, things fall off, we get crook, stuff doesn't work as well as it used to.

There's nothing we can do about it, we're getting older, we're ageing. But which bits are normal? Which bits do we have no control over? Which bits can we do something about? That's the kind of questions that we're going to be asking in this series, Is This Normal?, of Life's Booming. Now, of course, if you enjoy this series, leave us a review, tell all your families and friends about it.

And we want to hear from you as well. You can contribute to this. If you've got questions about things in particular that you want to know, perhaps there's some particular wear and tear happening to you. Let us know. We'd love to see if we can answer that question in the series. We're gonna look at things like menopause, gut health, mental health, lots of other burning questions.

So think about those areas and if there's something in there that's specific to you that you'd like us to cover, let us know.

From creaky joints to hip and knee replacements, let's find out the things that are really gonna affect our muscles and our bones, our musculoskeletal system. Someone who knows muscles a lot better than me is Melbourne based director of platinum physio, Rod Grof. Rod helps his older patients to live more active lives with less pain and he can share what commonly happens to our bodies as we age and also what we can do about it.

But before we bring on Rod, let me introduce someone who's very familiar to you. You're gonna know him. He's a great guy and a marvellous actor. You got to know and love him in Blue Heelers. He's currently in the ensemble theatres The Logie winning actor. Hello, John Wood. 

John Wood: Hello, James. How are you? 

James Valentine: Good. You're a bit crook. 

John Wood: Oh, I'm not that crook. I've had Rheumatoid arthritis for about the last 15 years and it sort of slows you down. 

James Valentine: What did you first notice? 

John Wood: Pains in the ankles, really. You know, quite severe pains in the ankles and difficulty getting around. And then I started to notice it in the hands, you know, like it was, you know, the knuckles were really swelling up and the hand was very difficult to move, but I also discovered I had Gout in, certainly in this hand, this hand I had an MRI done on and it was full of uric acid.

James Valentine: Yeah, right. And were they, what did they say at the time, was that compounding, were they separate things or compounding one another? 

John Wood: Well, they're separate and you take different medication for them both. I mean, you take allopurinol for the gout and methotrexate for the arthritis and I've started taking curcumin recently, which seems to settle things down a bit, and mersynofen. 

And this week, I've had, I don't know why it's happened, but I seem to have something like bursitis. There's no lump or swelling or anything, but the elbow has been giving me jib

James Valentine: It just happens. It's like, what do you do? It just happens, doesn't it? Everything starts to go a bit. How long a period, like from say the ankle pain to the joints, are we talking months, years? 

John Wood: Not very long. It was, it just seems that I've got Rheumatoid everywhere.

You know, like it's, apart from slowing me down a bit, it hasn't really affected my work, except for one occasion I auditioned for the Harry Potter musical and they had us marching up and down and across and sideways and doing all sorts of stuff and that was all fine, then this associate director from England said, now I want you all to fall down.

And I said, I can't even get on the ground to play choo-choo trains with my grandkids. So I said, it's a big mistake getting me to fall down. He said, nevermind fall down anyway. So I fell down and I had to be helped up by Julie Forsyth and a couple of other women.

James Valentine: And so it doesn't impede you that much, but it's painful.

John Wood: It's always very painful. Yeah. But at the moment, it's not too bad. I guess you get used to it as time goes on. And I've been lucky that the methotrexate has stopped any, you know, the stuff that says swelling. 

James Valentine: Yeah. It doesn't seem to be there. 

John Wood: No, no. And you know, I remember seeing old ladies when I was a kid, you know, whose fingers were really gnarled and bent. 

James Valentine: And sort of folded into a claw almost. 

John Wood: Yeah, yeah. 

James Valentine: It’s shocking. And so apart from the drugs, what else have you, what else have you tried? Exercise, diet? 

John Wood: Oh I'm trying, I'm staying at Kirribilli at the moment of course, and it's a bloody long walk up to the shops at Milsons Point. Just about, you know, like I'm getting fitter. 

James Valentine: Well let's bring in Rod. He's Director of Platinum Physio and he helps patients like you, you know, with, I suppose, the non chemical approach and trying to get that bloody long walk to maybe go a bit bloody further. 

Rod, thanks for joining us. What are you hearing and what John's telling us?

Rod Grof: I'm hearing a very common story. We have plenty of patients who come into our clinic with Rheumatoid arthritis. And you said John, 15 years ago was your onset of it. So often we hear that Rheumatoid arthritis’ onset is between the ages of 30 to 50 years of age. 

And you're currently taking methotrexate: just for our listeners, that’s actually a immunosuppressant, so it's going to slow down the immune response and in turn reduce, hopefully reduce the inflammatory response as well. And starting in the ankles, that's fairly common, but more so starting in the hands and the feet is probably the first point. And then it progresses to the knees, the ankles and as you've mentioned now, the elbows. 

James Valentine: You think the elbows are Rheumatoid? 

Rod Grof: There's a very good chance that it would be, yes. 

John Wood: Oh great, right. 

Rod Grof: But again, without a proper assessment, we can't categorically tell you that. But just interestingly that you mentioned that, you know, when James asked you about the exercise side of things, there's some really great non pharmacological interventions, John, that you could really get involved in. 

And one of them, which I could speak really highly about would be something called hydrotherapy, which is exercising in warm water at approximately 34 degrees Celsius, and just being able to really get a good workout and have a really targeted workout, which will address your muscles as well as