How to preserve your knees according to the NY Times.

Got knee pain?  Conventional wisdom suggested that for many years the knee cartilage did not repair itself due to a lack of blood supply to the tissue.

Many runners and other athletes may be proof that this idea is nonsense, and that movement and weight-bearing actually squeeze the cartilage-like a sponge keeping it healthy according to the latest science.  Knee injuries such as an acl can be rehabilitated with exercises directed at more appropriate weight-bearing and proprioceptive retraining.

The typical meniscus tear according to the latest information does not require surgery and may actually require evaluation and treatment of movement patterns that are loading the knees.   Many of those forces come from the feet and ankles and pelvis, providing a strong incentive to consider foot orthotics if you are asymmetrically built.

If you are having knee pain, who should you see first?  The typical regimen of visiting your family doctor often is not very helpful due to their limited training in musculoskeletal medicine.  Seeing an orthopedic usually results in evaluating the knee, while ignoring the other joints contributing to the knee pain mechanism and may increase the odds of having an expensive test ordered leading to rehabilitation or surgery to the joint.

There is more to the knee joint than just the knee.  The knee is a conduit of force.   It depends on properly functioning feet, ankles, hips, and a stable core.   Perhaps, this is why so many people are choosing to visit a chiropractic sports physician for their first visit.   Chiropractic sports physicians are holistic in their approach and will look at you, not just the painful area to determine why your knee hurts.  If you require physical therapy, they will send you.  If you require surgical intervention, they will let you know this as well while helping you avoid unnecessary or unhelpful expensive tests or rehabilitation protocols to the knee that are of limited value.

The NY Times recently offered some advice with a dose of the latest research on how exercise affects our knees and why exercises such as running are good for them.  Check it out below

How to Save Your Knees Without Giving Up Your Workout

There’s no magic bullet to knee health, but staying active and building muscles around the joint are crucial.

By Alex Hutchinson Nov. 19, 2021

In the annals of unsolicited advice, few nuggets have been dispensed as widely and with less supporting evidence than this: “If you keep doing all that running, you’re going to ruin your knees.”

The latest salvo in the debate over knees and running — a systematic review of 43 previous MRI studies that finds no evidence that running causes either short-term or long-term damage to knee cartilage — is unlikely to convince the opinionated ex-football star at your Thanksgiving table who swears his bum knee was caused by wind sprints. But given that nearly half of Americans are expected to develop painful knee osteoarthritis at some point during their lives, the findings do raise a nagging question: If abstaining from running won’t magically protect your knees, what will?

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