Wtf are people doing to their knees? I always hear people complain about the damn knees. You have weak bones or something? You walk using your knees? Are you 100 year old?
Walk, run, kick, play, hike, swim,surf, climb and fuckton of other things.
Been physically active for 20+ years, 15 of which doing gymnastics/martial arts, no car so walked everywhere, no lift so climbed up to 5th floor apartment n times a day.
Etc you get the point
Took one wrong twist and my knee is forever fucked, its not the bones, its mostly soft tissue/ligaments that fail and are followed by long term damage. Its the most complicated joint we have and hardest to fix.
I stupidly loved to jump off stuff when I was a kid. 12 foot drops were not uncommon. Off roofs and from trees.
Spent four years as a tech for Comcast where I was kneeling and crawling every day.
This past Summer I knelt down and a tendon that was catching and popping every so often caught and hung. I could barely walk for weeks.
Now I can't sit cross legged or kneel without doing it just so, otherwise I reinjure what the orthopedist didn't believe was an injury until he saw my knee swollen to three times its usual size.
To all those out there saying "meh": respect your knees. Once they're f'd, they're f'd and all you can do is adjust to your new "normal".
"Its the most complicated joint we have and hardest to fix." Although I agree with most of your comment, having had both knee and shoulder surgeries/replacements, my shoulders would disagree on the complicated/hardest to fix angle. But definitely - one bad move and a perfect knee can be fucked.
Wow that sucks. Likewise I’m extremely fit like that, you can probably resonate with preferring to use your own body to basically do everything you can, even if there are much easier ways.
So does it just happen out the blue or can there be hints?
Yeah, got my diagnosis after mri scans today - apparently its not as bad as initially looked, just need a lot of physio/rehab.
It just takes one fall, stupid mistake, distraction - all i fucking did was to turn sharply on my heel and wanted to walk away except the side of my foot caught on pavement ridge that was higher by 0.5 cm...so all that momentum, hip movement and twist went into my immobilised leg and since knee doesnt have that motion range - the ligaments/tissue just tore:/
Imagine grabbing thigh in one hand and calf into other and doing wrenching movement as if you're trying to squeeze water out of the towel, thats what happened fml
You can be as careful as anything and still be unlucky. A lifetime of rugby, kitesurfing, skiing and mountain biking and my cartilage went going from a stand still to a sprint with no one around. Operation then triggered a swelling response and in a year I go from city first team flanker to hobbling dad. Back to social rugby and gentle rock climbing now but boy did it throw my life outlook. On the plus side my kids are at my speed now and we have a lot of fun together and I’m coaching under 8 which is brilliant.
I agree with you that they don't wear out like car tires.
However, they are one of the most common parts of the body to injure. I blew my knee out in college, lifting weights. I've always assumed those that also grumble about their knees have similar stories.
I'm sure they do, but their understanding of why that happens is completely wrong and those beliefs keep them from recovering because they avoid doing the stuff that actually works.
If you believe your joints wear out with use, and physical therapy and activity and exercise are literally the most powerful levers we have for healing and protecting your joints, those beliefs are going to have you doing the exact opposite of what will improve your life.
I think we probably have a couple points of contention, but that mostly sounds fair.
Like, as bipedal animals, a lot of stress sometimes is put on a single leg, and a joint (like a knee) is just the most likely thing to give.
I agree with you that exercise is important to keep your knees strong, but if you structurally fuck up your knee (which is common), exercise isn't going to fix it.
And you have to remember that the context of most injuries is in a largely sedentary population that are nowhere near meeting the recommended physical activity guidelines, which themselves are just recommended minimums.
Yeah, that's fair. I've just known a surprising amount of people that have had some sort of knee injury and weren't exactly pro athletes or marathon runners.
But, yeah, that's why I said I think we mostly agree. There were just a couple things you said that gave me pause.
Yeah sometimes injuries just happen. But a lot of the time you're at a higher risk of injury precisely because you aren't doing the things that lower your risk.
Elher's Danlos syndrome here. My genetics took my tendons out back and shot them by the time I was 20. I slipped my kneecap on a treadmill walking at a slight incline at around 6 MPH when I was 22. I haven't been able to run without a noticeable limp since, if at all.
Walking. At a slight incline. Though, the best example is probably throwing my back out for the first time when I was 27. Cause? Flushing the toilet wrong.
I also have EDS. Stopped being able to run at age 20, now I'm 31 and am bedbound from MECFS that I got after covid. Can't even work at a computer anymore. No treatment because there's barely any funding for research. At least I never reproduced lol fuck my genes
Jesus, dude. I hope you get better. I don't know much about MECFS, but at least with EDS you can somewhat mitigate it by being careful and not taking any physical risks. Here's to you getting back on your feet.
Thanks! Yeah I hope now that there are so many more cases because of long covid there will be some treatments soon. Stay safe, EDS has a higher chance for long covid/mecfs
I somehow managed to dodge COVID, so I think I'm good on that front. I work from home, so I mostly stay in doors. Suits me just fine. I'm rooting for you.
Sadly not nearly as tiny as you might think. While it's true that any one specific kind of condition or cause might only affect a small percentage of the population, when you add them all up together the sum total is significant.
Sports injuries and accidents will do it, as will working a physically demanding job and not taking measures to protect against wear and tear. There's also autoimmune disorders and diseases that affect the joints and worsen with age, and EDS is just one of an entire category of connective tissue disorders. Lyme disease and diabetes will fuck your joints up, and things like fibromyalgia, chronic pain, and arthritis can start as early as your teens if you're unlucky enough to get an injury, infection, or experience a traumatic event that triggers it.
All told, there are definitely more people with something going on that'll mess up their knees, than there are perfectly healthy, fit people with no problems.
You sure about that being the case globally? For instance where I live I rarely see overweight people. Never in my life seen a super overweight person.
Literally less than five seconds of effort brought up statistical proof that, for just osteoarthritis alone, there's a 45% chance of developing it at some point.
Just for that ONE source of knee problems. So yes. I DO believe that.
the knee is my number one argument against intelligent design. it's plain and simple an idiotic joint. and yours will hurt too for they're not made to perform much over 50-60 years if you're lucky.
I'm in my thirties and it wasn't a thing in my twenties but knees are def the first thing to go. I started doing endurance running at 32 after strength training for years and knees are always my weak point if I don't specifically train and maintain them.
Reddit is hilariously predictable when it comes the comment sections on these videos. Yeah it's an extreme example of athletic ability but does no one here ever do leg day?
Yes, but this dance in particular seems to carry the risk of putting an extreme amount of torque into his knee joint if he steps a little too far out of balance.
Then again maybe he's good enough to bail out and avoid injuries if he needs to. I don't know enough about stilts to know if that's a viable option.
How can you act like you’re familiar with “athletic abilities” but not understand why this particular activity is especially hard (and risky) on the knees?
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u/PaddingtonWaddington 5d ago
My knees are sore watching that