When you get older, your knee is often the culprit for alerting you that your wellness is not what it once was. Whether it’s stiffness, weakness or pain, the warning signs can occur at any time, and you know your body is not going to cooperate with what you had in mind.
Baby boomers are increasingly receiving an often unwelcome diagnosis: arthritis, or, more specifically, osteoarthritis, which is the most common form of arthritis in the knee. It occurs when the cartilage that coats your bones at the joints and eases their passage, known as articular cartilage, wears away with use. As you get older, chemical changes in your cartilage causes it to retain less water, and doctors say this is what makes it more susceptible to stress and weight gain.
However, Dr Frederick M. Azar, chief of staff of the Campbell Clinic in Memphis and an official with the American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons, says that, in the end, it comes down to the your genetics, and the kind of cartilage you got from your parents. He explained, ‘It is a little like buying tires. You can get nice treads or you can get retreads.’ Yet, evidence suggests that not enough baby boomers are doing anything to treat their “tyres” and may be seeking knee treatment in disproportionate numbers.
Wellness experts suggest that this is the first generation to grow up exercising, and so they have put a lot of wear and tear on their bodies. However, Dr. Letha Griffin, a staff member at the Peachtree Orthopaedic Clinic in Atlanta and a team physician for Georgia State University, argued, ‘We say that, but we’re not sure of that,’ noting that one of the best ways to avoid arthritis is to keep fit — and that means exercise.
Dr Mark W. Pagnano, an orthopaedist at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, theorises that baby boomers put to much expectation on their bodies: ‘patients will say: “I can’t exercise. I can’t ride my stationary bike or regular bike or go for walks of one or two or three miles”.’ The orthopaedics academy offers a number of recommendations, which includes exercises to increase range of motion and flexibility, using devices that offer support to the knee. This means switching to exercises easier on the knee, like swimming and running on treadmills instead of on pavement, but as they, too, can take a toll, Dr Azar used a word that boomers don’t like to hear: moderation.
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