What can I do to keep my knees strong?

Gina DiPietro 0:06

knee pain can alter your life quickly or become a lingering irritation. But there are steps you can take to stave off potential injuries and needed terior ation, welcome to Novant Health healthy headlines. I'm Gina dipietro. Keeping your knees healthy as you age is vital to remaining mobile and avoiding arthritis. In this episode, Dr. Zachary sandbelt, a Novant, Health Sports Medicine Specialist talks to Cliff Mertens about what you can do to keep your knees in good working order. Thank you for listening.

Cliff Mehrtens 0:37

Me first about why is it a good idea to strengthen my other leg muscles? And which one should I concentrate on to help knee pain?

Dr. Zachary Sandbulte 0:48

So the first question, why is it why it's a good idea, the data is pretty conclusive on that, that if you keep your muscles strong around the around the joint, the muscles support the joint and take stress off the joint more and more. And so if you, if the opposite of that they get weaker and weaker, your joints gonna bear more of the burden. Okay. And so I think that working, you know, trying to strengthen all the muscles is helpful, you know, quads, hamstrings, but the data really says the most helpful is getting your quads, you also want to keep your muscles loose. And so if you have

Zachary Sandbulte 1:23

a lot of tightness, particularly hamstrings, you can put a little extra stress on the joint. And so I tell people, you know, there's really two, two things that we know definitively make a difference for knees in the long run. In that, you know, leg strength and weight and weight, maybe even to the big the bigger one. But those two things, there's just, there's mountains of data that say these things really help keep these healthy over over longer periods of time. The example I give to patients a lot is they've looked at marathoners and people that have run a lot of marathons and they don't actually have any more incidence of, of arthritis than anyone else. And so it's kind of flies in the face of the intuition, which would be well, if you're running and pounding the pavements going away your knees out faster. But that actually is not the case. And then in May, May, in fact, be protective of the knees. And the rationale as well. If you run a bunch of marathons, generally speaking, you're strong, your muscles are strong, and you're generally fit, you know, you're not, they tend to not be real overweight. And so again, those that kind of two things I think are the most important.

Cliff Mehrtens 2:37

Let's talk about weight, that's a good lead in, people hear all the time Oh, lose weight, it's easier on your joints. But explain what the whole pounds per square inch is. And how that affects you even a small weight gain or medium weight gain away of us can make a difference for create more pain, because it's pressing down on that joint.

Zachary Sandbulte 2:59

Yeah. So the data that it's, it shows that if every pound you lose is about four to five pounds of stress off of the joint off the knee joint. And so, you know, even, you know, even if you have modest weight loss, you know, 10 pounds, well, if you if you if you kept it as is 50 pounds of stress off the joint, multiply that by five years or 10 years, that makes a sizable difference. And, you know, I always think about the kind of the example I used to say, you know, pick up, pick up some luggage, you know, before you go to the airport and walk around the house for a while and see how your knees feel and you, you can feel it, you can feel a sizeable difference. And that's, you know, how much you pack, I guess, but you know, even even like, you'll start to notice a difference. And so, it really, if you if you multiply that over years, yours, that really is gonna erode the cartilage quite a bit faster, that extra weight and stress.

Cliff Mehrtens 4:02

What about people who they're not trying exercises, but they don't want to jump into something that's super high impact. They don't want to, they don't want that a lot of pounding on their legs, what are some low impact exercises that can help them?

Zachary Sandbulte 4:14

First, the way I think of that is, first and foremost, exercise for what it is, that's the most important part. So even if we have people who say, look, I got a bed to run, fine, you know, that's what you need to do. That being active part to me is the most important, I think it is smart to to reduce the high impact, if possible, and sometimes you do have to kind of change activities. Running jumping are gonna be the worst. You know, walking is an impact activity, but it's very low impact. And so I think, fine. I think you know, ellipticals, fine cycling all those are great, to me the bestest swimming, it's just it's it's fluid motion. It's resistance. It's low impact, or no impact. You know, the problem is you'd have to have access to a pool. But that to me is the is probably the ideal exercise. So there's, there's a lot of ways you can skin the cat. But I think that that good real good ones that are easy walking is great. Cycling, elliptical, those are all fine. And swimming is great, too.

Cliff Mehrtens 5:23

And swimming is not just using your muscles around your legs you're using, you know, you're getting the whole full body, shoulders and back. And it's pretty good

Unknown Speaker 5:31

for you. Absolutely.

Cliff Mehrtens 5:33

That's what with cardio too. It's It's It's a and you're not waking up with swollen knees from swimming.

Zachary Sandbulte 5:40

That's right. I it's if you asked me what the purpose exercise is, that's as close as we get

Cliff Mehrtens 5:48

something about range of motion, how does that help, if I have a bad knee or I want to avoid rain, developing my range of motion as I don't want to get stiffer as I get older.

Zachary Sandbulte 5:56

So joints generally speaking, joints want to move in there. If we immobilize joints, they'd get stiffer, and they do worse and worse. And so you want to, it's, it's important to keep moving joints. And I don't think you necessarily have to be pushing your motion as far as you can all the time. But you do need to be moving the joint. And so someone who says you know, but every time I hyper flex my knee, you know, it hurts, well, you don't necessarily have to do that. But I do want you to try to go through kind of your comfortable range of motion as much as possible. Because again, that is you use it less and less, it will get stiffer and stiffer, and it will actually get worse and worse. So you you want to try to keep moving your joints as much as possible. With that question, I generally tell people you want to you want to be moving, but kind of let pain be your guide to a degree. Don't push it as far as you can we, we really make yourself uncomfortable. But go through your range of motion. As long as as long as it's it's within comfort.

Cliff Mehrtens 7:03

Speaking exercises, ...