Once More: Proper Exercise Won’t Damage Your Knees

One thing that exasperates me is the all-too-common belief that, once you develop chronic knee pain, you have to stop exercising completely or else the condition will get worse.

So I’m always happy to hold up a study (or in this case even better: many studies) that disprove this wrongheaded attitude.

Here is the opening paragraph of a summary of the research:

A study by scientists has discovered that therapeutic exercise does not harm articular cartilage of the knee in people with osteoarthritis, a leading cause of disability worldwide associated with pain, impaired mobility and quality of life. It may, in fact, benefit articular cartilage.

It turns out that this conclusion was reached by a research fellow at the University of Aberdeen's Institute of Medical Sciences. He didn’t examine a single study either, but rather 21 of them that were conducted in countries from China and Holland to Turkey.

The two main findings: (1) Therapeutic exercise doesn’t damage the articular cartilage in the knee joint. (2) Also, that kind of exercise doesn’t increase inflammation.

All great results, and they should give knee pain suffers confidence to embark on an exercise program.

Now, what’s important to remember though: therapeutic exercise is good. Any old exercise may not be. Even if you think you've found the perfect exercise that's not too stressful on the knee, you have to be careful and monitor any symptoms closely.