Fitness: The secret to healthy knees and hips
With so many baby boomers complaining of sore hips and knees and the number of diagnosed cases of osteoarthritis on the rise, researchers are actively exploring strategies to reduce its burden on subsequent generations. A degenerative joint disease that causes a slow loss of the cartilage that buffers friction between bone on bone, it’s often linked to decades of wear and tear. But it’s not enough to simply suggest osteoarthritis is an inevitable consequence of a body that’s been put through its paces. It’s likely several factors contribute toward increasing the risk of osteoarthritis, which is why several studies are taking a closer look at the causal effect of a variety of lifestyle behaviours and whether there are optimal levels of physical activity that ensure knees and hips stay healthy with age. To home in on a better exercise prescription for reducing the risk of osteoporosis, a research team from Luxembourg reviewed the movement patterns of 85,705 Dutch citizens age 40-69 years of age over a roughly seven-and-a-half-year period. Using data from accelerometers, the researchers tracked exercise type, volume and intensity, and sleep and compared it to osteoarthritis cases obtained from hospital records to better understand the relationship of 24-hour movement behaviours and the incidence of osteoarthritis. “The aim of this prospective study was to investigate the association between objective device-measured movement behaviours and........
