Save Your Knees

Your knees are precious, save them!

Knee pain is a constant companion of overweight people.

The most frequent pain overweight people came to me with, in the first half of my practice, were low backache and pain in the neck. Knee pain had relatively insignificant presence in the list of complaints. Over the last decade knee pain has progressively become the most common complaint, relegating the other two to distant second and third positions!

Today more and more people are developing knee problems and at a much younger age. Osteoarthritis is a common ailment, especially in obese people. Ligament and cartilage injuries are also frequently seen.

To top this, more and more people are reporting accidental knee injuries. The commonest causes of such injuries are two wheeler accidents and sports injuries, especially common amongst football players.

These are the reasons why knee surgeries have become very common. Knee replacement surgeries, almost unheard of a decade ago, are commonplace today.

Many of the knee problems can be prevented by taking simple precautions.

Keeping your weight down is obviously the basic requirement of maintaining your knee health.

Every 4 kg extra weight puts nearly 20 kg of extra load on your lower body joints and wears them down that much faster, causing arthritis.

Extra fat also triggers release of some harmful chemicals in the body, those damage various body tissues including joints, causing arthritis.

Losing those 4 kg can ease that much load on those joints and slows down the progression of arthritis. Keeping them off may even prevent it long term.

Additionally, you must prevent activities that cause undue wear and tear of knee joints. Activities like mindlessly excessive walking, jogging, running, hill climbing and sports like badminton may lead to such wear and tear.

These are all excellent cardiovascular activities and everyone must take up such activities to keep themselves heart healthy. What must be avoided is, overdoing them.

Take up such activities moderately and also ensure that you strengthen your knees with proper knee exercises while you take up the above activities as workout options.

You will have to learn knee exercises, which are easy enough to perform within a few minutes at home, without any special equipment. Start with these exercises when you are young and have healthy knees, don’t wait to develop knee trouble to start them. Water-walking (in chest high water) is also an excellent knee exercise, even for those with arthritis of the knees.

You can consult your own doctor or visit us to learn these exercises.

Your knees are precious, save them for the old age!

Also read the article ‘Losing Four Kg Extra weight Improves Health Immeasurably!‘ on this website.