My Journey With Weight Loss – Your Knees And Running

Ok, I am about done with this whole atmospheric river thing. Once again our recreational property has flooded and an evacuation order has been issued for those that live there. We have pretty much lost all hope that our trailer will be unscathed. Now we just have to do some forward thinking about how we are going to handle the cleanup.

I heard an excellent interview on the radio the other day regarding the impact of running on your knees. I have had many people tell me that they had to stop running because it was damaging their knee joints. Apparently, that used to be the mantra. Back in the mid 80’s a study was done and it concluded that over time running would damage the cartilage in the knees potentially leading to arthritis. The general advice was if your knees hurt, stop running. Now the advice has changed.

The person on the interview has been involved in a new study which says the opposite. This study has shown that running can actually help to keep your joints healthy. She explained that cartilage is like a sponge and when you put pressure on it the moisture it is holding comes out, much like when you are wringing out a sponge. Then when the pressure is removed the cartilage is able to absorb the fluid that is in your knee joint (she did say the name of the fluid but I was too slow to write it down). Continually doing that and keeping the joint moving can lead to a healthier joint. She went on to say that the current study has shown that if you have osteoarthritis running can help the joint stay mobile over the long term. I checked in with my physio because that is what he had told me and he explained that nearly 30 years ago when I wrecked my knee the thought was any sort of strenuous exercise would further damage the joint.

So then, why do so many people end up with painful knees when they run. The explanation was that it is more likely due to the way the person was running. She recommended that if you are a runner and your knees are painful look into changing to shoes that are a better fit for you and have your running style examined to see if that is the cause. She also said it is important to give yourself recovery time (hence why I don’t run every day) and that they found people who continually overdid their running were more likely to suffer an injury.

This just proves that not only was my physio correct in his support of my running, it also completely validates my coach’s goal of taking things slowly and getting to the finish line injury free.