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CARING
MEDICAL SPORTS CENTER The notion that sports and recreational activities cause an inevitable wear-and-tear on the joints just does not hold up when the scientific studies are evaluated. Because few competitive or recreational long-distance runners suffer severe joint injuries, and many regular runners can recall how long and how often they have run, studies of these people provide some of the best opportunities to examine the relationship between exercise and osteoarthritis. In one investigation, 41 long-distance runners were compared with 41 matched controls. Runners with a mean age of 60, who had run an average of 180 minutes per week for 12 years, did not have a greater prevalence of osteoarthritis, although they did have a 40 percent greater density of their vertebral bones. Another investigation compared 17 people with a mean age of 56, who had run an average of 28 miles per week for 12 years, with 18 non-runners. Runners had no more complaints of pain and swelling of the hips, knees, ankles, and feet than non-runners, and radiographic examinations of the joints of the two groups did not show any differences. Impact
Injuries and Arthritis People who participate in sports that subject joints to more intense impact and torsional loading than running may have an increased prevalence of osteoarthritis. Participants in sports with a high degree of torsional loading and levels of impact must be extremely careful that all of their sports- related injuries heal completely, otherwise degenerative joint disease is likely to occur. The sports with the highest levels or impact, torsional loading, and thus have the highest rates of injury are baseball/softball, basketball/volleyball, football, handball/ racquetball, competitive running, squash, lacrosse, soccer, rugby, singles tennis, water skiing, and karate. The hope for the older athletes is to be as fit as when in the prime of their athletic careers. Often, however, this is not the case because of the degeneration that has occurred due to non-healed sports injuries. It is very evident that the main sports injuries that lead to symptomatic osteoarthritis in later years are those that occur to the ligaments, causing joint instability. It has to be this because the body, in a homeostatic attempt to stabilize hypermobility and protect joint structures, responds by depositing calcium along lines of stress. This produces bone spurs, or exostoses (calcium deposits where ligaments attach to bone), at the attachments of postural muscles and ligaments to bone. Calcification of the whole ligament can occur, as happens in ankylosing spondylitis. Typically, however, bone spurs develop in the ligaments/fascia (as in plantar fasciitis) and these are generally a sign that the ligaments were no longer able to stabilize the joint so "reinforcement" was brought in, in the form of additional bone. This additional bone is called osteoarthritis.
ARTHRITIS
RISK FROM ARTHRITIC INJURY
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