Knee Arthritis

For a long time we’ve been lead to believe that ‘years of activity’ and ‘wear and tear’ are responsible for knee arthritis. The amount of time I receive a referral from Gold Coast knee surgeons or local GP’s, to advise a patient about giving up running with their arthritic knee is quite interesting.

Now, this is only one article – but I’ve included it because it’s part of a larger, growing, evidence base that running in particular might not be the cause and might not actually be a bad treatment for knee arthritis – if prescribed appropriately by a physio.

In 2018, Ponzio et al. found in their study of 675 (quite a lot!) marathon runners, that the arthritis rate of active marathoners was below that of the general U.S. population – so a population who have done and continue to do more running than the rest of the population, have less knee arthritis. I know, I know, crazy it seems! It goes against what we’ve really all assumed or been lead to believe, now i’m not going to elaborate on it here. I will do another post down the track with more info about what might be a bigger contributor to knee arthritis.

But for now, if you’re advised to stop your running because of your ‘knee arthritis’ maybe a second opinion with Surf Life Physio is what you need first.

Written By Josh Carter