Welcome to Ultimate EnerGI™ Blog

HIP The hip joint gives you a lot of stability because it needs to carry your body weight, but the ball-and-socket anatomy also gives you the ability to rotate and to move forward but not back. One of the foundations of your body, the hip joint is a place where many different muscles and tendons attach; many of the injuries that happen to this ball-and-socket joint stem from overuse and the wear and tear of being in constant motion. But because it’s more stable than mobile, it’s more prone to fracture than dislocation (especially as you get older, when it’s more likely that you’ll lose balance on a rug or an uneven part of the pavement and land on your side).
No matter which one we’re talking about, joints are vulnerable parts of your body. They’re soft substances, so if there’s some kind of trauma, the joint is the first thing to take the hit. But as you age, your concern shouldn’t revolve around injury. It should revolve around degeneration, and how you can keep your joints young and strong.

OSTEOARTHRITIS As you age, the density of those slippery shock-absorber surfaces thins, and you gradually lose your cushioning. When that happens, the effect is similar to walking in shoes without socks. While socks provide cushioning (and contain odor), they also provide a buffer to absorb the friction that would occur if the shoe rubbed up against your skin. Without the sock, your exposed skin would rub against the shoe, get irritated, blister, and become inflamed. It’s the same concept with your joints. As you lose your internal sock, your bones lose their ability to slide, and they can rub directly against each other. When that happens, the effect is like stick on stick—and it hurts. In simple form, that’s what osteoarthritis is. It’s a condition in which the cartilage that covers the bones and forms the surface of the joints becomes thinner, rougher, and less protective of the bone, so the bones grind against each other, and the joint becomes inflamed. It’s painful and makes walking—or any kind of movement—difficult (by the way, not all arthritis shows up on X rays, and not all painful arthritis means there’s significant joint
damage). Currently, osteoarthritis affects more than 20 million Americans, and that number is expected to grow to 40 million by 2020, making it one of the most common health problems in the country. Eight-five percent of us who reach eighty-five will have knee osteoarthritis if we do not do something to prevent it. When it’s detected by X ray alone, it’s usually not a problem, but when there’s pain associated with it, there is.

Joint deterioration really affects those super and professional athletes who put an excessive amount of pressure on their joints throughout their careers. Since many of you are not training for the next Olympics, you can prevent damage to keep your joints while you’re young—and even regenerate damaged cartilage.

Though osteoarthritis can occur in any of your joints, including your hands, hips, and spine, we’re going to focus mainly on your knees, because it’s the largest hinge in your body and because you need your knees an awful lot. On the surface, your knees seem very strong, because they’re one of the most powerful joints in the body; you use the knee joints to both push off and absorb force. But they’re also prone to wear and tear for one major reason. Your knee joints are the UPS men of your body. They carry your body no matter how heavy the package—and without the help of dollies. Just as it’s easier for the UPS guy to carry a book than a refrigerator, it’s also easier for your knees to haul lighter freight. When you gain ten pounds of body weight, it feels more like a thirty-pound weight gain for your knees. (No matter how much you weigh, your knees are constantly under strain. When you walk up stairs, that ten pounds feels like seventy pounds of weight to your knee joint.) Unlike osteoporosis, osteoarthritis is a disease that you will feel—often—in the form of mild to severe pain, creaking, or swelling and stiffness in your joints. And though MRIs will show that 85 percent of us will have osteoarthritis by the time we reach eighty-five, only about 50 percent of us will have the symptoms. Many things can make osteoarthritis more likely, including bad posture, overuse, heredity, obesity, the lack of vitamins C and D, and the lack of calcium. Since symptoms usually occur in middle age, osteoarthritis is like osteoporosis in one important way: You can prevent progression of the disease, and even reverse it, by following the right antiaging guidelines

Share This