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Exercise helps to keep your joints healthy Most people think of exercise for building muscles and keeping the heart healthy. While excise certainly is important for those reasons, these are only some of the benefits exercise provides. Arthritis which is a degenerative joint disease can be both painful and disabling. Osteoarthritis is extremely common. Most people as they age develop some degree of joint degeneration. Knowing that, it is smart to do whatever we can to prevent this from happening. Joint cartilage can be compared to a sponge. When a joint is compressed synovial fluid is squeezed out of the cartilage and when the joint is decompressed the synovial fluid is sucked back in. This provides the cartilage with nutrients and also helps with removal of waste products. Exercise will compress and decompress joint cartilage which stimulates cartilage growth as long as the load on the joint and the exercise is not excessive. Both too high and too low mechanical load decrease the proteoglycan content of the cartilage. Proteoglycan is part of the makeup and building material of the cartilage. This indicates that not only elite sports, but also physical inactivity is a possible risk factor for osteoarthritis (Roos EM, Dahlberg L. 2004). Researchers in Sweden conducted an interesting study where the participants were patients who 3-5 years prior had undergone partial medial meniscus resection. The patients were divided in two groups. One group participated in supervised exercise 3 times weekly for 4 months and the other group were used as control group and did not exercise. On MRI examination the group who exercised showed an improvement in GAG content, an important aspect of the biomechanical properties of cartilage (Roos EM, Dahlberg L. 2005). The researchers concluded that moderate exercise may be a good treatment not only to improve joint symptoms and function, but also to improve the knee cartilage GAG content in patients with high risk of developing osteoarthritis. Wishing you the best of health, Didrik
References:
Roos EM, Dahlberg L. Positive effects of moderate exercise on glycosaminoglycan content in knee cartilage: a four-month, randomized, controlled trial in patients at risk of osteoarthritis. Arthritis Rheum. 2005 Nov;52(11):3507-14. |
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