How Excercise can Hurt your body.

Written by Kathryn Savage

An active life is a vital life.
We’re taught from the age of pee-wee soccer that physical fitness walks hand in hand with emotional well-being, strength and personal satisfaction. In a world where physical activity is the status quo, and treadmills come in as many brands, shapes and sizes as bottled water, sadly, joint health is increasingly declining.

We’re wearing out the tread.
Many of the 70 million baby boomer's are being forced to reckon with their active lifestyle. Osteoarthritis is just one possible consequence of a long, active life according to a recent report. Osteoarthritis currently affects about 46 million Americans. Stanford University's Longevity Center reports that this number will hit 67 million by 2030.

Hips are like tires, once you “wear out the tread,” the cartilage, you’ve got to replace the hip. Sadly, new hips (knees, wrists) wear out too. Overtime, it is not unlikely for multiple replacement surgeries to be deemed necessary to keep you moving.

What to do?
When you exercise, focus on low or no impact activities like yoga, bike riding, hiking, swimming and pilates instead of jogging. At the end of the day, we’re all fighting the cartilage-clock. Overtime, cartilage that pads the joints wears down and wears out, and once you get bone on bone contact, that’s when the pain starts. The best solution is to focus your workouts on activities that don’t put large amounts of pressure or pounding on joint cartilage.

It’s not all about stress...
Stress on joints is commonly believed to be the main cause of cartilage wear and tear. New research suggests that repetition alone, that three mile jog you’ve been taking since the 1970’s, is not the only, or the main, reason for cartilage to go kaput. Other factors like obesity and previous injury may play a bigger role than popular science suggests.

Glucosamine and Chondroitin?
Many people, including a personal trainer I know very well, pop a vitamin that is a mix of glucosamine and chondroitin daily. This combo is believed to reduce pain and pressure on knees. Can a magic pill cure cartilage breakdown? Not yet, anyway. While an assortment of vitamins may make lofty advertising claims, medical professionals still lack the ability to generate new cartilage. Everything from aspirin, vitamin supplements, to cortisone shots is a quick pain fix, not a solution. Joints perform a mechanical function, and joint replacement is the only way we know to fix this function.

Want to know more about healthy joints? Read Stanford Universities take on how to keep aging joints healthy.

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