Abstract
The perpetuation of enormous upward osteoarthritis trends despite more than a century of research implies both a need and possible attention to practical self-motivated protective health behaviors that can be disseminated and diffused readily even in the face of a strong belief in the idea that artificial intelligence when combined with surgery and drugs, will prove uniquely helpful. Yet, many aspects of osteoarthritis may be traceable to human behaviors that can arise at any age and may persist to impact osteoarthritis negatively, despite surgery and/or drug administration. At the same time, multiple authors have begun to harness behavioral theories of health in efforts to foster pain reduction and aid function in osteoarthritis at all disease stages, but commonly only to modest avail. Unfortunately, inconsistent with current osteoarthritis studies and predictions of an enormous osteoarthritis burden in the older population, efforts to prevent osteoarthritis are rarely discussed, even though it is established that alone or in combination the significance of injury and excess body weight on the risk and progression of disabling osteoarthritis joint disease is indisputable. Moreover, a wealth of research supports the idea that the degree of osteoarthritis pathology may depend on the supplicant’s efforts to prevent joint macro as well as micro trauma and among the most potent mechanisms here for many reasons is the need to counter excess obesity. This idea is not novel, but is often ignored or addressed inconsistently. In going beyond the self efficacy theory model of individual perceptions about weight control and its association with joint loading and pathology, we propose the thoughtful application of the attributes of the Protection Motivation Theory in this realm warrants attention.