Can Running Actually Help Your Knees?

Domer

Folks,

Was sent this link to a good article from the New York Times.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/08/11/phys-ed-can-running-actually-help-your-knees/

There is hope for us all yet!!!

Domer

zardette

hmmm I think that this VERY misleading !!:mad:

I would would like to stress this comment made to the article as more to the point..

"The issue is weight, not running. The more you weigh, the greater the chance you will develop osteoarthritis as you age.

The control group members who developed arthritis were overweight, like much of the US population.

Runners weigh less than the average American. But so do serious tennis players, or for that matter vegetarians.

Yes, running burns calories, which helps control weight. But being a vegetarian also controls weight. Running is one way to remain slim. Running is not a panacea for healthy knees.

In more than thirty years of practice as an orthopedist, I’ve never seen a lifelong slim person with osteoarthritis of the knees unless they had suffered a serious injury, while osteoarthritis is usual in the elderly with lifelong obesity.

The key is to remain slim lifelong. "

Z

plodder

Though it's heartening that the article dispels this myth:

You can’t be a runner past the age of 40, as I am, without hearing that running will ruin your knees, by which doomsayers usually mean that we’ll develop “degeneration of the cartilage in the kneecap, which *reduces its shock-absorbing capacity,”

I think it's a very interesting article

Bloody Nipples

zardette wrote: »

hmmm I think that this VERY misleading !!:mad:

I would would like to stress this comment made to the article as more to the point..

"The issue is weight, not running. The more you weigh, the greater the chance you will develop osteoarthritis as you age.

The control group members who developed arthritis were overweight, like much of the US population.

Runners weigh less than the average American. But so do serious tennis players, or for that matter vegetarians.

Yes, running burns calories, which helps control weight. But being a vegetarian also controls weight. Running is one way to remain slim. Running is not a panacea for healthy knees.

In more than thirty years of practice as an orthopedist, I’ve never seen a lifelong slim person with osteoarthritis of the knees unless they had suffered a serious injury, while osteoarthritis is usual in the elderly with lifelong obesity.

The key is to remain slim lifelong. "

Z

Where does it say the control group were all overweight? My father is a slim man (10 and a half stone) in his mid 50s who doesn't run. He has severe arthritis of the knees. This control group could only be considered a proper control group if the percentage of obese people in it was 30% or less, which is the current rate of obesity in the US for people aged 30-65. This allows the control group to be a rough reflection of the middle aged US population. If the whole group was overweight this report would be laughed off as farcically unscientific instead of being published in a "well-respected journal".

Edit: Though I'm not taking away from the fact that excess weight is a contributory factor in a lot of cases of arthritis of the knee.

RoyMcC

zardette wrote: »

The key is to remain slim lifelong. "

Z

Oh dear