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Athletes get all the headlines when they get injured, but women are up to eight times more likely than men to tear their ACL. The looser construction of the female knee—and overall weaker skeleton—can compromise stability and predispose women to ligament tears. The injuries are also linked to hormonal changes around the time of menstruation, so female high school, collegiate, recreational, and professional athletes end up suffering many more tears than men.
Suspended by muscles, ligaments, and meniscus (cartilage), the knee is both powerful to bear its heavy load and also mobile, which makes it susceptible to jarring twists that lead to tears in the support structures. But the biggest culprit is obesity: the extra weight-bearing squashes the cartilage.
You ice an injury for forty-eight hours after an injury because of the swelling. While swelling indicates an increase in fluid or blood deposits in the area, it slows down recovery from the injury. The presence of this additional fluid makes joints stiffer and more painful, which makes them weaker. Ice reduces the swelling—and the pain. After that forty-eight-hour period, you use ice to generate heat (when you take the ice away it heats up) or heat alone on the injury to warm it up. The heat loosens up the joint or muscle, giving you more flexibility and allowing you to move more freely during rehabilitation.
Because it’s linked loosely with ligaments and muscles, your shoulder is extremely flexible. But that flexibility also makes you prone to rotator cuff tears from overextension.
Belly dancing isn’t the only thing hips are good for. Hip joints are the ones that provide the hinge for any kind of forward motion. While they’re not as flexible as shoulder joints, they’re large joints, and a lot of things can happen in there. Any chronic pain needs to be addressed by a doctor, but hip pain does not automatically mean you have arthritis. If the pain is coming from the front of the hips, in the groin area, it’s probably a sign of some form of arthritis. But if you’re experiencing some tenderness along the sides, your pain more likely stems from tendonitis or bursitis, which can be treated in a number of different ways, including anti-inflammatory medication and physical therapy.
Our strongest joint, the hip has a ball-and-socket construction that gives us stability, but at a price. The joint is difficult to stretch out and is prone to stiffening with arthritis. The effect is that your joint feels as if sand is being poured into the joint.
Cracking your knuckles makes you sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies and never goes over well in church. While it’s painful for us to hear, you’re not doing any harm to your joints, bones, or muscles when you crack—unless you feel pain when you crack them. It’s just caused by the high pressure suction of gas being expelled when your joints move apart. If it hurts when your knuckles or knees crack, you need to see your doctor to assess what kind of joint damage you may have.
For the record, osteoarthritis is only one kind of arthritis. Arthritis is the broad name given to any inflammatory joint disease. Rheumatoid and some other forms of arthritis are not diseases associated with aging, but rather autoimmune disorders, in which antibodies attack your cartilage, which is what triggers that inflammation and joint pain.
If you’ve ever strained your back, you know that on the scale of 1 to 10, the pain ranks at a 692. It can be paralyzing—making it difficult to walk, to sit, to get up, to sleep, to do anything. All you want to do is to lie down, prop your head on some pillows, flick on Ally McBealreruns, and remain still. And you can think of nothing better than having your spouse deliver ice packs, ibuprofen, and the latest issue of Tattoo Today directly to your bed. But your spouse shouldn’t play nurse. Why? Statistically speaking, married people with back pain suffer two and a half times longer than single people. Attentive spouses may be doing the right thing emotionally, but by encouraging the suffering to stay in bed, they’re doing the wrong thing physically. If you stay in bed for longer than forty-eight hours, your back muscles weaken—and can increase your risk for further injury. In order to recover from strain, your muscles need to grow stronger and stay active, and the only way

Athletes get all the headlines when they get injured, but women are up to eight times more likely than men to tear their ACL. The looser construction of the female knee—and overall weaker skeleton—can compromise stability and predispose women to ligament tears. The injuries are also linked to hormonal changes around the time of menstruation, so female high school, collegiate, recreational, and professional athletes end up suffering many more tears than men.
Suspended by muscles, ligaments, and meniscus (cartilage), the knee is both powerful to bear its heavy load and also mobile, which makes it susceptible to jarring twists that lead to tears in the support structures. But the biggest culprit is obesity: the extra weight-bearing squashes the cartilage.
You ice an injury for forty-eight hours after an injury because of the swelling. While swelling indicates an increase in fluid or blood deposits in the area, it slows down recovery from the injury. The presence of this additional fluid makes joints stiffer and more painful, which makes them weaker. Ice reduces the swelling—and the pain. After that forty-eight-hour period, you use ice to generate heat (when you take the ice away it heats up) or heat alone on the injury to warm it up. The heat loosens up the joint or muscle, giving you more flexibility and allowing you to move more freely during rehabilitation.
Because it’s linked loosely with ligaments and muscles, your shoulder is extremely flexible. But that flexibility also makes you prone to rotator cuff tears from overextension.
Belly dancing isn’t the only thing hips are good for. Hip joints are the ones that provide the hinge for any kind of forward motion. While they’re not as flexible as shoulder joints, they’re large joints, and a lot of things can happen in there. Any chronic pain needs to be addressed by a doctor, but hip pain does not automatically mean you have arthritis. If the pain is coming from the front of the hips, in the groin area, it’s probably a sign of some form of arthritis. But if you’re experiencing some tenderness along the sides, your pain more likely stems from tendonitis or bursitis, which can be treated in a number of different ways, including anti-inflammatory medication and physical therapy.
Our strongest joint, the hip has a ball-and-socket construction that gives us stability, but at a price. The joint is difficult to stretch out and is prone to stiffening with arthritis. The effect is that your joint feels as if sand is being poured into the joint.
Cracking your knuckles makes you sound like a bowl of Rice Krispies and never goes over well in church. While it’s painful for us to hear, you’re not doing any harm to your joints, bones, or muscles when you crack—unless you feel pain when you crack them. It’s just caused by the high pressure suction of gas being expelled when your joints move apart. If it hurts when your knuckles or knees crack, you need to see your doctor to assess what kind of joint damage you may have.
For the record, osteoarthritis is only one kind of arthritis. Arthritis is the broad name given to any inflammatory joint disease. Rheumatoid and some other forms of arthritis are not diseases associated with aging, but rather autoimmune disorders, in which antibodies attack your cartilage, which is what triggers that inflammation and joint pain.
If you’ve ever strained your back, you know that on the scale of 1 to 10, the pain ranks at a 692. It can be paralyzing—making it difficult to walk, to sit, to get up, to sleep, to do anything. All you want to do is to lie down, prop your head on some pillows, flick on Ally McBealreruns, and remain still. And you can think of nothing better than having your spouse deliver ice packs, ibuprofen, and the latest issue of Tattoo Today directly to your bed. But your spouse shouldn’t play nurse. Why? Statistically speaking, married people with back pain suffer two and a half times longer than single people. Attentive spouses may be doing the right thing emotionally, but by encouraging the suffering to stay in bed, they’re doing the wrong thing physically. If you stay in bed for longer than forty-eight hours, your back muscles weaken—and can increase your risk for further injury. In order to recover from strain, your muscles need to grow stronger and stay active, and the only way and increase by one or two minutes every few days. Soon you’ll be fit enough to walk an hour a day. You can even start small with resistance training. Doing simple exercises with soup cans or books will stimulate your muscles in new ways—and will begin the process of kick-starting your metabolism so your body can burn fat. If you want to live longer, start today. Your family—and your younger body—will thank you.
People think that using three-pound dumbbells while walking a couple miles will get them both stronger and leaner at the same time. But using three-pound dumbbells while walking is like observing toddlers entering the terrible twos—their size makes them look harmless, but they can actually cause tornado-sized trouble. The seemingly harmless activity of carrying three-pound dumbbells actually turns out to be a leading cause of orthopedic surgery. Why? Most people don’t pay attention to the way they swing the weights when they walk, so they get sloppy in their form. That causes trauma and wear and tear to your shoulder joints because the motion is throwing the joint out of its normal range of motion over long periods. In terms of joint health and exercise, proper form is essential.
Unless you’re a mermaid or your last name is Spitz and you spend all day in the water, swimming won’t unconditionally save you from getting joint pain, but it may help delay the onset. And it will certainly help you stay in shape while you’re recovering from problems associated with your joints.
We’re a country of crazes: hula hoops, parachute pants, Chia pets. They come, they go, some stick around. One that appears to be around for a while is the high-protein diet craze. Although equally effective for pure weight loss as other diets, the ultra high-protein diets can accelerate bone loss. Large amounts of protein eaten every day—in the amount of more than 140 grams a day (that’s the equivalent of a pound of chicken, fish, beef, or pork, or two and a half pounds of nuts in a day)—are believed to be threatening to your bones because the extra protein can cause your body to excrete calcium rather than absorb it. Same goes for carbonated and caffeinated drinks; the caffeine may actually make you excrete the calcium before your body’s been given a chance to use it. Add 20 milligrams of calcium a day for each twelve-ounce carbonated soft drink, four-ounce cup of coffee, and four ounces of protein you consume.
The toxins from cigarettes damage the alveolar air cells so they leak and pop; that’s what causes emphysema. In asthmatics, breathing feels like a vise is being tightened around your bronchus so that you can’t get air out (that’s what causes the wheezing sound). By the way, yes, these lungs are upside down.
To inhale deeply, you must move your huge diaphragm muscle down to suck air into the lungs. This is best done by pushing out your belly when you start to breathe in. Even though the much smaller intercostal muscles can help to a lesser degree by lifting the rib cage, most folks use only these muscles to breathe, which is very inefficient.
Well, in Demi Moore’s case, it may be true. But hoarseness can signify actual changes of your vocal cords, especially in people who often speak loudly, like schoolteachers and football coaches. When you smoke or strain your voice (which professional singers—even those who lipsynch—are taught not to do), you irritate the vocal cords and form scars and subsequent overgrowths that are called polyps.
Those wacky nose strips worn by football players actually do make a difference for the average snorer. They keep your nostrils apart, and by doing so, they help prevent snoring and help move nitric oxide from your nasal passage into your lungs, which improves lung function.
Fat accumulates in the back of the throat and causes snoring and sleep apnea when the surrounding muscles relax during sleep. At the back of the tongue, the epiglottis protects the trachea (windpipe) from food and prevents choking. The thyroid gland, which is nestled just in front of the trachea in your neck, can be seen in some folks.

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