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| NEWS FROM PEOPLE ON THE OUTSIDE |
30/12/2009: South Africa
Is Running Bad for Your Knees? Maybe Not
Perhaps because it seems intuitively true, the notion persists that running, especially when done long-term and over long distances, is bad for the joints.
Indeed it would be hard to think otherwise when, with each foot strike, a runner's knee withstands a force equal to eight times his body weight — for a 70Kg. person, that's about 550 lbs. of impact, step after step.
The common wisdom is that regular running or vigorous sport-playing during youth subjects the joints to so much wear and tear that it increases a person's risk of developing osteoarthritis later in life. Studies have suggested that may be at least partly true: in one study of about 5,000 women published in 1999, researchers found that women who actively participated in heavy physical sports in their teenage years, or weight-bearing activities in middle age, had a higher than average risk of developing hip osteoarthritis by age 50.
Carry on reading this article on: Time.com
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