One of the most researched topics in sports medicine is whether or not injuries can be prevented. Sport is big business these days, so there is a lot of interest in finding ways to ensure star athletes can perform at a high level without suffering injuries. With all this research has anyone found any proven ways to prevent running injuries?
A little over a year ago I spoke at seminar with a Physiotherapist by the name of Toby Watson. We were trying to compare the way Physiotherapists and Osteopaths treat common …

Apparently not! Even I thought it was but the results of a new study (to read it click here) have found that “not only does running not cause osteoarthritis in the knee, it may even help to keep the problem at bay”.
The study followed 2863 people and found that “runners, regardless of the age they were when they ran, had less knee pain and osteoarthritis.”
This supported another previous study of 74,00 people from 2013 which “found that running significantly reduced the risk of both osteoarthritis and knee replacement.”
Some other choice quotes …

A new study has come out saying that the best treatment for arthritis is exercise. This makes sense and is something I’ve long believed and I may even have posted about it once before with respect to knee arthritis and tai chi.
The pain associated with arthritis comes from things like the muscles tightening up around the joint (to try to stabilise it), the joint losing mobility and there being less fluid in the joint.
It would make sense then, that exercise would help. Exercise increase your flexibility, your balance, promotes blood flow …

I just read an article in the New York Times Health section answering a reader query about knee pain when walking down stairs. This is a really common occurrence and I thought the information in the article was pretty good so I’ve posted the link to it here.
Basically, you want to have good strength and flexibility in your knee joint. If your knee is stiff then the joint becomes compressed, so do plenty of stretching. And if your knee is weak or unstable (which can be a sign there is …

New research has suggested that if you have a torn meniscus you might not need surgery after all. The study compared the progress of half a million people who either had an operation or had rehab. They found the surgery led to a quicker improvement, but that over time the results with rehab were great – 70% of people who did their exercises did not end up needing surgery.
A couple of quotes from the article:
1. The researchers found that physical therapy cost far less and carried far fewer risks from …

No, sadly this is not about that classic sitcome starring the great Alan Thicke (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Growing_Pains). I’ve been seeing a bit of this lately and in my opinion it’s pretty basic to take care of so I thought I’d do a little summary to outline what it is and what you can do about it.
As the name would suggest, it is a pain associated with growth, usually rapid growth, like you would see in a growth spurt. In a nutshell what we are talking about is a pain that develops when …

Clearly this article was written by a guy – you can feel the lack of commitment straight away in the title – tai chi may help reduce knee pain. The reason I’m posting this article is because it combines information from a few other posts, and I love it when various we get various sources supporting each other.
Previously I posted a piece on the correlation of the findings on medical imaging to pain and dysfunction. What that article said was that having osteoarthritis does not necessarily mean you get pain/poor …

Now, this wasn’t the best designed study ever, for starters they only had 20 subjects, so it is hard for us to read too much into it. But the results do show a trend that is worth acknowledging. And the idea that we can minimise the risk of knee injury when running is worth investigating.
In this study they did a variety of tests, such as weights, height, strength, flexibility, and joint angle measurements, as well as questionnaires on running habits on runners to see which, if any, of these was …