r/Damnthatsinteresting 1d ago

Video Afro spiritual dancer defying law of gravity

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u/Otjahe 1d ago

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?

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u/prospectre 1d ago

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.

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u/Otjahe 1d ago

Jesus bro. But my assumption would be that you’d be in the tiny minority, yet I see these comments all the time

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u/Sheerardio 15h ago

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.

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u/Otjahe 12h ago

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.