What you need to know to Knee Joint Pain from

What you need to know to Knee Joint Pain from becoming an Inevitable Part of Life

Here's what the experts say to those who look on at the half million people each year who submit reluctantly to joint replacement surgery because the knee joint pain or the hip joint stiffness that they suffer each day is too much to bear: if you don't have seriously painful joints yet, with a good maintenance schedule, not unlike what you would have for your car, you could possibly avoid adding to those numbers.

We keep hearing about how the body is such an amazing machine, keeping running through years of neglectful and careless behavior. Even so, no one ever said that it could keep it up for any longer than 50 years at a time. Once the padding wears off that cushions and smooths the mechanics of the joints, it doesn't come back. On the knees especially, when that cartilage thins out, the pain can be crippling. They call it osteoarthritis. To many people, as bad as the pain can be, and as difficult as it makes their lives, the cost of tending to it as what hurts the most. The knee joint pain that results from arthritis can be surprisingly expensive to treat. Joints become so inflamed and nonfunctional that one has no choice but to order for an artificial knee joint. Even if you do have medical insurance, you could end up paying 10% of the cost of the procedure. On a standard $40,000 knee replacement's operation, you could have to pay as much as $4000. And then there is the pain you put up with in the aftermath of the operation, and the pay cut for staying away from work.

Arthritis knee joint pain is a national epidemic. A disproportionately large part of the country's population is aging; and young people are taking to a rough contact sports in greater numbers than ever before. A footballer tripping and falling on his knee and hurting it can look forward to having it come back in very serious form decades later. It used to be that you never saw anyone with an knee joint pain or arthritis before the age of 60. These days, with young people wearing out their joints more quickly than ever before, doctors often see arthritis complaints in people in their 30s. This could easily double over the next 20 years. If you want to do your part right now and protect your joints before you wear them out, you would be doing your wallet a big service, and you would also be doing the nation a special favor helping cut medical costs. If you have joints that are okay today or maybe just a little troublesome, here's what you need to do to have arthritis be one more strange disease out there that you never have to know about.

Weight plays an important part in how quickly your knee joints wear out. The more you weigh, the more your body weight presses down on the cartilage in your knees. It isn't just your body weight the knee takes either; each time you take a step, your body weight crashes down on it with extra force, usually five times what you weigh. So if you happen to be overweight by 10 pounds, that's 50 pounds hammering down on your knees - for no reason. There are studies that show that two out of three knee replacement procedures done are on overweight people. And also, probably because women have hormonal problems to deal with come menopause, women's knees have a harder time putting up with obesity. The good news is, that even shedding 10 pounds helps a woman lower her risk of knee joint pain and the arthritis it leads to, by half.

If you are just beginning to experience little twinges of the joint pain, doctors advice you to stay off concrete running tracks too. Each time your foot slams down on the pavement, screaming shockwaves from the impact damage your knee cartilage. And the damage is much greater than it would be to run on a soft surface such as on a treadmill. And this should apply to women especially. Just staying fit, with better toned muscles helps you lots too. Try to build the muscles around your knees to help support the knee joint, and to help take a little pressure away from the knee and its job supporting the weight of the body. If you follow these simple principles, and stay away from contact sports or anything that could bring you an injury, you should clearly stay on this side of serious surgery for as long as you live.