What a year of managing knee pain actually costs

Nobody decides to spend hundreds of pounds a year on a knee. It arrives in small amounts, a tube here and an appointment there, and the total only becomes visible if you sit down and add it up.

So here is the sum, at UK prices, for someone managing a bad knee without surgery.

Private physiotherapy

Typically forty five to seventy pounds a session, more in London. NHS physio exists and is free, but waits vary by area and the course is usually short. People who go private tend to start with a block of six.

Six sessions: roughly £270 to £420.

Worth saying clearly: physio is the most useful thing on this list. It is the only entry that changes the strength around the joint rather than how it feels today. If you can only spend money on one thing, spend it here.

Gels and rubs

A 100g tube of the well known anti-inflammatory gel runs about fifteen to eighteen pounds at Boots. Somebody using it regularly gets through one every few weeks.

Ten tubes a year: roughly £150 to £180.

Supports and braces

Fifteen to forty pounds each. Most people own two or three because the first was the wrong size and the second one slid down. They wear out and get replaced.

Two a year: roughly £40 to £70.

Supplements

Glucosamine, cod liver oil, turmeric and collagen, in the region of ten to twenty five pounds a month if you take them continuously.

A year: roughly £120 to £300.

Be sceptical here. The evidence for glucosamine in particular is weak, and NICE does not recommend it for osteoarthritis. This is the line item most likely to be money leaving the house for nothing.

Heat, in whatever form

Wheat bags, hot water bottles and heat pads, plus replacing the ones that split or wear out. Fifteen to fifty pounds a year, depending on how many you get through.

The total

Somebody doing most of the above spends somewhere between six hundred and a thousand pounds a year on a knee. Not in one payment, which is exactly why it goes unnoticed.

Where the money is wasted

Three patterns show up again and again.

• Repeat purchases that never change anything. The fourth tube of gel is doing the same job as the first. If the first three did not change your mornings, the fourth will not.
• Things bought for the wrong size. Supports in particular. Measure your leg before buying rather than after.
• Things bought without a way back. If it cannot be returned, you are betting the full price on a guess.

How to judge anything before you buy it

Ask what it costs over a year rather than today. Ask whether the claim is specific enough to check. Ask what happens if it does nothing for you, and get the answer before you pay rather than after.

A one-off purchase you can send back is a smaller risk than a fifteen pound tube you will buy ten more times without noticing.

Ours is one payment with thirty days to change your mind, and we pay the postage if you send it back. Whether that is better value than another year of tubes is a sum you can now do yourself.