Why do Non-Runners Claim Running is Bad for Your Knees?

Why do Non-Runners Claim Running is Bad for Your Knees? Because if you are overweight and out of shape running does hurt your knees.

Long-distance running among healthy older individuals was not associated with accelerated radiographic osteoarthritis. These data raise the possibility that severe osteoarthritis may not be more common among runners.

runners knee wrote:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2556152/

Long-distance running among healthy older individuals was not associated with accelerated radiographic osteoarthritis. These data raise the possibility that severe osteoarthritis may not be more common among runners.

There are limitations to this study that you neglected to highlight. So, long-distance running among some of us old cats isn't the panacea you young bucks think it is. It can be very bad for the knees if you're not built for running and have bad biomechanics.

Here's the limitations of the study (PMC2556152):

There are several limitations to this study. Radiographic OA was evaluated without including analysis of clinical symptoms. Studies have shown a relative lack of concordance between degree of radiographic damage and symptoms.8,26,27 Nevertheless, the number of replaced knees, generally replaced due to function-limiting symptomatology including pain, may be considered a surrogate measure for severe symptomatic disease. Additionally, the HAQ-DI, without exclusively evaluating knee disease, is a validated measure of functional limitation which incorporates lower extremity activities within a broader context of disability. No statistical differences in knee replacements or HAQ-DI were found in comparisons of runners and controls.

Only tibiofemoral disease was evaluated in this study, so associations between running and patellofemoral OA could not be investigated. Although almost all studies of vigorous activity and knee OA have been concerned primarily with tibiofemoral disease, at least one previous report had suggested that patellofemoral disease may be more prevalent in runners, particularly in women.24

It must be recognized that this study is subject to possible selection bias as the runners were all healthy individuals who continued running at least into the 6th decade of life, most of whom had been running for nearly a decade prior to study entry. Therefore, these results may not be generalizable to individuals who begin long-distance running in their later years, or to those who had previously discontinued running for injuries or other reasons. The increased time spent in nonrunning vigorous activities, approximately 100 minutes/week in each group, was spent engaged in brisk walking. While this may be reflective of secular trends in more recent decades given wide publicity of the health benefits of cardiovascular exercise, it also raises the possibility that the increase in vigorous activities may have predisposed these subjects to a slightly accelerated progression of OA compared to sedentary subject who maintained or decreased time spent in vigorous activities.

This study was unable to document that long-distance running among older adults confers any deleterious or protective effects on the development of radiographic OA. Much larger studies involving hundreds to thousands of healthy older adults followed for several decades are needed to determine if long-distance running may be associated with a modest decrease in incidence or severity of radiographic OA. Long-distance running or other routine vigorous activities should not be discouraged among healthy older adults out of concern for progression of knee OA.

Arthritic Old Runner wrote:

There are limitations to this study that you neglected to highlight. So, long-distance running among some of us old cats isn't the panacea you young bucks think it is. It can be very bad for the knees if you're eating an inflammatory diet high in carbs and processed seed oils and don't run your easy days very easy.

[/quote]

fify

Saywhat2 wrote:

awesome blossom wrote:

Serious question. Why haven't I met a single runner with bad knees but people who don't run seem to have met enough to be so confident about this? Are there any professional runners with knee problems?

They are idiots and running is work so it must be bad for the fatties.

Agree though every time a person tell me running is bad they hobble around and only people I see having knee replacements is non athletic people...I semi blame the lazy doctors to who say if it hurts when you run don't run...Enabling the lazy behavior.

If I was an orthopedic surgeon and this was true, I would be encouraging all my patients to run.

ClonedDuck wrote:

There is a professor at Maryland, Ross Miller, whose research argues that running helps prevent knee OA.

I would love to see his research. All of the literature reviews I've done show no increase in OA, but I've never seen a (statistically significant) decrease.

fify wrote:

Arthritic Old Runner wrote:

There are limitations to this study that you neglected to highlight. So, long-distance running among some of us old cats isn't the panacea you young bucks think it is. It can be very bad for the knees if you're eating an inflammatory diet high in carbs and processed seed oils and don't run your easy days very easy.

fify[/quote]Stupid post...there's no evidence whatsoever that a "high-carb diet" causes OA in older athletes. And if you're an older runner dealing with OA, there's no evidence that running "easy" will prevent the OA from getting worst. In case you have forgotten running is high-impact therefore more non-weightbeating excercise is the preferred strategy (who would have thought).

This is why I hate these kind of threads because the young kids here post stuff on a subject that they're totally clueless on. You don't see these kinds of stupid posts on the "50+ Masters Training and Racing Open Forum" where the serious subject of OA and the aging athlete can be discussed in a more mature manner.

How is someone posting an alternative theory ridiculous? Diet is important, it provides the building blocks for all of our body parts, and I wouldn't be surprised at all if an inflammatory diet is associated with elevated risk of OA.

In fact there is an association:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5905611/

The association between metabolic syndrome, type-2 diabetes and OA risk or progression may partly explain the apparent benefit of dietary-lipid modification resulting from increased consumption of long-chain omega-3 fatty-acids from oily fish/fish oil supplements. A strong association between OA and raised serum cholesterol together with clinical effects in statin users suggests a potential benefit of reduction of cholesterol by dietary means.