Sure, we all know/knew this. But did we need to be reminded? It's hard enough to get out there three times a week. At least there was the dim hope that maybe this was helping you edge, ever so slowly, back toward a 23-year-old's body...
But, on the good news side of things, the NYT cites several scientific reports to conclude that running is good for your knees: "despite entrenched mythology to the contrary, runners don’t seem prone to degenerating knees." Continuing:
"Instead, recent evidence suggests that running may actually shield somewhat against arthritis, in part because the knee develops a kind of motion groove. A group of engineers and doctors at Stanford published a study in the February issue of The Journal of Bone and Joint Surgery that showed that by moving and loading your knee joint, as you do when walking or running, you “condition” your cartilage to the load. It grows accustomed to those particular movements. You can run for miles, decades, a lifetime, without harming it. But if this exquisite balance is disturbed, usually by an injury, the loading mechanisms shift, the moving parts of the knee are no longer in their accustomed alignment and a “degenerative pathway” seems to open. The cartilage, like an unbalanced tire, wears away. Pain, tissue disintegration and, eventually, arthritis can follow."
Upshot: Get out there and run. It may not help you drop any weight, but your knees will love you for it.
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