Opinion – Finish Line: How to protect your knees without interrupting your race

Due to the impact naturally caused by running, this activity has always been seen as bad for the knees. A New York Times report, however, shed new light on the topic, bringing a series of precautions that runners can maintain to protect this part of the body that is so vital for practice — and for everyday life.

The starting point is a recent study that, reviewing 43 previous MRI research, found there was no evidence that running causes short-term or long-term damage to knee cartilage. Despite the good news, the question that remained was: if stopping running does not mean protection, how can you prevent yourself?

The American journal points out that researchers, when reviewing studies that link running and cartilage, observed that cyclical weight-bearing activities, such as walking and running, tighten the cartilage of the knee joint, causing it to expel waste and extract new ones. supplies a fluid rich in nutrients and oxygen at every step.

This means, according to researcher Michaela Khan of the University of British Columbia, that cartilage is a tissue that adapts and thrives with regular use. And it also helps explain why switching activities at the first sign of pain is counterproductive. By switching to a low-impact exercise, such as swimming or cycling, instead of strengthening cartilage, the athlete ends up starving it.

Supplementation can be an ally, but it will never be the salvation and should always be administered with the follow-up of a specialist — I already talked about it here on the blog. According to Jackie Whittaker, also a researcher at the University of British Columbia, told the NYT, the most important thing remains the practice of cyclical support activities, in addition to not completely interrupting the exercise at the first sign of pain.

While the actual benefits of taking supplements have not been amply proven, there is some evidence. A small 2011 study from Tufts Medical Center found that the quality of cartilage in the knee improved after six months of taking 10 grams of collagen daily.

More recently, other research on lab-grown ligaments, which, like cartilage, are made primarily of collagen, also supports the idea that consuming collagen before exercise can trigger a new synthesis of the substance in the body.

But in addition to “feeding” the cartilage, you need to be consistent and respect your own limits. Stress can be beneficial, but it needs to be measured. It’s no use from day to night to go from 5 km to 15 km. It needs to evolve gradually, over weeks.

According to the report, one of the parameters to identify the overload is if the pain persists for more than an hour after exercise or appears in the morning of the next day. This also does not mean that it is necessary to completely stop the activity, but adjust how this training is being done.

Consistency is directly linked to the dangers of the weekend athlete. Your knee will only be able to withstand what it has been prepared for in the previous weeks and months.

And it’s always good to remember: when in doubt, look for a doctor.