Bone spurs are not arthritis, but they are one of the most common results of it. Osteoarthritis is the joint condition that breaks down cartilage over time, and bone spurs are bony growths the body produces in response to that damage. Up to 80% of people with osteoarthritis develop bone spurs, making the two so closely linked that many people assume they’re the same thing. They’re not, but understanding the connection matters for managing both.
How Bone Spurs and Arthritis Are Connected
A bone spur (the medical term is osteophyte) is a small projection of extra bone that forms along the edge of a joint. Think of it as your body’s misguided attempt at repair. When osteoarthritis wears away the cartilage cushioning between bones, the body responds by growing new bone tissue near the damaged area. It’s essentially a bony scar.
The process works like this: damaged cartilage and the tissue lining the joint release chemical signals (inflammatory molecules) into the fluid that fills the joint space. These signals trigger cells in the tissue surrounding the bone to start building new cartilage-like material, which then hardens into bone. This is why bone spurs can show up not only right next to the damaged cartilage but also in other parts of the same joint. Because the chemical signals travel through shared joint fluid, a spur can form in a part of the knee that still has healthy cartilage, driven entirely by damage happening on the other side of the joint.
This distinction is important: osteoarthritis is the underlying disease process. Bone spurs are a structural change the disease causes. Treating bone spurs without addressing the arthritis behind them is like patching a wall crack without fixing the shifting foundation.
Bone Spurs Can Form Without Arthritis
While osteoarthritis is the leading cause, it’s not the only one. Bone spurs also develop from repetitive stress injuries, sports injuries, and accidents. They tend to grow on bones that absorb a lot of force, particularly the spine and heels, and at sites where tendons or ligaments attach to bone. Any situation where the body detects tissue damage near bone can trigger new bone growth as a repair response.
Several other conditions are associated with bone spurs:
- Rheumatoid arthritis and lupus, which are autoimmune forms of joint inflammation rather than wear-and-tear damage
- Ankylosing spondylitis, a type of inflammatory arthritis that primarily affects the spine
- Degenerative disk disease, where the cushions between spinal vertebrae break down
- Osteoporosis, which weakens bone density overall
- Rotator cuff tendinitis and other forms of tendon inflammation
So if you’ve been told you have a bone spur, it doesn’t automatically mean you have osteoarthritis. But given that arthritis is the most common driver, it’s worth discussing with your doctor whether joint degeneration is part of the picture.
Why Many Bone Spurs Cause No Symptoms
Many people have bone spurs and never know it. The growths themselves aren’t painful. Problems arise only when a spur presses against something sensitive: a nerve, the spinal cord, a tendon, or another bone. Where that happens determines what you feel.
In the spine, bone spurs can narrow the space around nerves, causing numbness, tingling, or weakness that radiates into the arms or legs. In the shoulder, they can catch on the rotator cuff tendons during overhead movements, creating pain and limiting range of motion. In the heel, they’re often found alongside plantar fasciitis, contributing to sharp pain with the first steps of the morning. In finger and toe joints, they can create visible bumps and stiffness that many people associate with “arthritis hands.”
The symptoms people attribute to bone spurs often come from the underlying arthritis itself, specifically the inflammation, cartilage loss, and joint stiffness. Separating which symptoms come from the spur and which come from the arthritis can be difficult without imaging.
How Bone Spurs Are Found
Bone spurs are typically visible on standard X-rays, which is why they’re often discovered incidentally during imaging for another problem. If a spur is suspected of pressing on nerves or the spinal cord, a CT scan or MRI provides more detail about the surrounding soft tissue. In many cases, especially with knee or hip osteoarthritis, the spurs show up on routine X-rays taken to evaluate joint damage and are simply noted as part of the overall arthritis picture.
Managing Bone Spurs and the Arthritis Behind Them
Because bone spurs are usually a consequence of arthritis rather than a standalone problem, treatment focuses on the underlying joint condition first. For most people, that means conservative approaches aimed at reducing pain and preserving joint function.
Stretching and targeted exercise are consistently the most effective first step. For heel spurs associated with plantar fasciitis, home-based stretching programs have been shown to reduce pain by about 35%, outperforming formal physical therapy in some trials. Applying ice for 20 minutes before bed can cut pain by roughly 44% and reduce tissue thickness in the affected area. Supportive insoles or orthotics provide additional relief, with studies showing significant pain reduction within two to six weeks of use.
For bone spurs in other joints, the approach follows a similar pattern: low-impact exercise to strengthen the muscles around the joint, anti-inflammatory strategies to manage pain, and activity modifications to reduce stress on the affected area. Weight management plays a major role for weight-bearing joints like the knee and hip, since every extra pound multiplies the force those joints absorb.
Surgery to remove a bone spur is uncommon and typically reserved for cases where a spur is compressing a nerve or the spinal cord, or physically blocking joint movement or swallowing (in the case of cervical spine spurs). When surgical removal is necessary, hospital stays average around three days, and symptom improvement takes about five weeks on average, though recovery varies widely. One consideration with surgery: bone spurs can regrow, especially if the underlying arthritis continues to progress.
Age and the Likelihood of Both
Both bone spurs and osteoarthritis become dramatically more common with age, which reinforces why people conflate them. The prevalence of bone spurs rises to about 55% in people over 62. Among people in that age group who also have osteoarthritis, the rate climbs to 80% or higher. Nearly all bone spurs found in people over 40 are associated with some degree of arthritis.
This age pattern reflects the cumulative nature of cartilage wear. Cartilage doesn’t regenerate well, so decades of joint use gradually thin the cushioning layer. As more cartilage is lost, more inflammatory signals are released, and more bone spurs form. It’s a slow, self-reinforcing cycle, which is why early management of osteoarthritis through exercise, weight control, and joint protection can slow the formation of new spurs over time.