Is it true that pounding the pavement causes arthritis? Does it matter what kind of shoes you wear or what surface you run on?
When you run, every step you take can land with a force equal to almost four times your body weight. Run a mile, and you’re taking 1,500 steps like that. Sure, we’re all born to run, and perhaps even evolutionarily adapted to chase skittish deer across miles of open plain. But our ancestors weren’t running on concrete and the average hunter was probably carrying less weight than the typical London Marathon first-timer. So if you take up running – or have been doing it for decades – are you setting yourself up for creaking knees and other niggles in old age?
Just in case this is as far as you read, the answer is no, probably not. Performance coach Joseph Lightfoot says: “Lots of studies show that runners have lower instances of knee osteoarthritis than sedentary people. There are also papers which show that runners report less knee pain than sedentary people, and being a runner is linked to reduced disability in later life. Overall, the message from the research is that running is a good thing.”
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