KLMNO
HEalth&Science
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 20 , 2020. SECTION E EZ EE
THE WASHINGTON
POST/ISTOCK
JOINT HEALTH
BY CHRISTIE ASCHWANDEN
Y
our knees ache, your neck cracks
or maybe there’s a twinge in your
hip. If you’re suffering from
painful joints, you’re not alone.
Genetics, obesity and prior injury can
predispose someone to joint pain, but
arthritis is by far the most common
cause, and more than 54 million Ameri-
cans experience some form of it, accord-
ing to the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention.
Osteoarthritis is the most common
type, and it happens when the cartilage
in the joint breaks down and the sur-
rounding bone develops inflammation.
Osteoarthritis becomes more common
with age, but you don’t have to just grit
your teeth and suffer through it, says
Jason McDougall, a professor at Dalhou-
sie University in Canada who specializes
in arthritis and pain research.
SEE JOINT PAIN ON E5
Keeping active
helps manage
joint pain
BY MARLENE CIMONS
M
att Oates, 41, ran competitive
track and cross-country in
high school and college, then
kept on running. On New
Year’s Day 2018, he resolved to run every
day that year, and he did — a total of 2,435
miles, including 14 half-marathons. He
has had a few injuries, most of them
minor, except in 2005 when he tore the
ACL — the anterior cruciate ligament —
in his right knee while playing indoor
volleyball. He recovered from surgery,
and resumed running.
In 2019, however, he slipped and fell
while frolicking with his young nephew
in a natural waterfall during a Memorial
Day outing at Georgia’s Kennesaw Moun-
tain National Battlefield Park. “I didn’t
think too much of it at the time,” says
Oates, who lives in Raleigh, N.C., where
he manages a moving-and-storage com-
SEE CARTILAGE ON E4New procedure
can regenerate
injured cartilage
BY KATHERINE ELLISON
I
gnoring generations of parents
who’ve warned that knuckle crack-
ing is bad for you, between 20 and 54
percent of Americans continue to
engage in this annoying nervous habit.
Many have been reassured by repeated
clinical reports over the decades that
there is no strong evidence that knuckle
cracking causes arthritis. A 2018 Harvard
Medical School blog went so far as to
pronounce the practice “harmless.”
“Harmless” is overstating it, however,
argue experts who have studied the fine
print of the research. Even as there’s no
strong link to arthritis — specifically
osteoarthritis, the degeneration of the
cartilage cushioning the ends of bones —
cracking knuckles, they conclude, may
still harm your hands.
Seattle neurosurgeon Rod Oskouian is
the most recent researcher to jump into
SEE KNUCKLES ON E4Knuckle cracking
isn’t a totally
harmless habit
BY MARLENE CIMONS
W
hen it comes to sports inju-
ries, ankle sprains head the
list. About 25,000 occur every
day in the United States. But
you don’t need to be running or kicking a
ball to sprain an ankle. All it takes is a
misstep off a curb, down a flight of stairs
— or even just walking across an uneven
surface.
What’s worse, once you’ve had one, you
are inclined to sprain the same ankle
repeatedly unless you do exercises to
strengthen it. The biggest risk of suffer-
ing an ankle sprain is having had one in
that ankle already.
The reason for this is the weakening of
what’s known as proprioception. It’s a
phenomenon that affects all of our joints,
directing the body’s intuitive ability to
know where it is in time and space — such
as being able to touch your finger to your
SEE ANKLE SPRAIN ON E5Why you’re likely
to sprain the
same ankle again
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