A new international study found that one specific activity can greatly reduce your risk of developing arthritis of the hip and knee.
As you might have guessed since we’re a foot and ankle blog, that activity has a lot to do with your feet. We’re talking, of course, about running!
Preventing Osteoarthritis
For their study, researchers from all across the globe in Spain, Sweden, the United States and Canada took a comprehensive look at 17 studies that comprised of more than 114,500 people. Researchers were interested in learning about how running habits affected a person’s likelihood of developing hip or knee osteoarthritis. Some thought that running should strengthen these joints, while others thought the repetitive stress on these areas could cause them to wear down more quickly.
After looking at the data, researchers found that 3.5 percent of recreational runners developed arthritis in either their hips or knees. Conversely, 10.2 percent of participants who said they did not run eventually developed hip or knee arthritis. So the study suggests that running is better for your knees and hips, but they also uncovered this nugget. 13.3 percent of individuals who ran competitively eventually developed hip or knee arthritis, suggesting that overworking these areas may be worse than the other groups.
There’s a lot to extract from those findings, and just because competitive runners had a higher rate of arthritis than sedentary people does not mean you should remain on the couch instead of going for a run, but it appears that there’s some benefits to working in other exercise routines instead of just going for a long run every day. That being said, researchers were confident in saying that for the vast majority of runners, running can help stave off knee and hip osteoarthritis.
“The principal finding in this study is that, in general, running is not associated with osteoarthritis,” Dr. Eduard Alentorn-Geli, of the Department of Orthopedic Surgery at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, said in a press release. “The novel finding in our investigation is the increased association between running and arthritis in competitive, but not in recreational, runners.”
Running is a great way to stay in shape and keep your body strong into your wonder years, but be sure to take it slow as you increase your workload, or you can leave yourself susceptible to injury. If you are dealing with any foot- or knee-related pain when you’re running, don’t ignore it, as it can snowball into a bigger problem. Set up an appointment with Dr. Silverman to have it examined.