Do you understand the concept of stress/recovery/adaptation? Both hyaline cartilage and the subchondral bone interface adapt to stress, as do all the stressed tissues.
Member
The Physics/Anatomy of How Muscle Supports Joint in OA
It is often said that obese individuals are considered at risk for osteoarthritis because their excess mass is applying additional load to the joints.
While this may be partly true, I think this is an incomplete assertion. Rather, is this because they have a lower muscle mass:weight ratio and less musculature surrounding the joints (thereby putting the joint in a less stable/more painful position)? (I guess the idea of decreased muscle mass can also be applied to the elderly with degenerative joint disease).
I don't believe an increase in weight during strength training (assumed mostly muscle) would cause a detrimental increase in load to the joints. But I'd like to understand how this works from a physics/anatomy perspective.
Is this because the added support to the joints supplied by the increase in strength offsets the added load (weight increase) to the system?
And how does the musculature work to absorb some of the load the meniscus takes?
Thank you!
TMPHBITEU
Do you understand the concept of stress/recovery/adaptation? Both hyaline cartilage and the subchondral bone interface adapt to stress, as do all the stressed tissues.
✓ Member
Well, this is rather timely....
TMPHBITEU
Yes, Dr. Baraki's article on this very topic will appear soon.
Starting Strength Coach
Is it the obesity causing increased load on the joints, or is it the likely reduced physical activity that resulted in obesity that causes the degradation of the cartilage?Originally Posted by PLM
Member
Both.
The joints and cartilage are weak due to atrophy and the and the load is too heavy due to overeating.
TMPHBITEU
More complicated than that, George. The load would be adapted to, since it didn't get there today.
Member
It would be adapted to if it was added in a matter that involved doing more than changing the channels on the tv or walking to the fridge and in repeated doses.
Of course the dynamics change if you are actually active, but just eating at a perpetual surplus. I've met plenty of fat dudes in the trades with no joint issues because they were actually practicing gradual loading of a sort to their joints, but that is not most fat people though.
TMPHBITEU
How would you gradually add a load and remain unadapted to it? Not talking about ROM here, just the load of a 300-pound ass.
Member
By essentially doing nothing with the load. There has to be some sort of resistance of the load involved to trigger a strength adaption, no?
Your joints are not bearing the load of your body weight simply because that weight exists. At least not all of the weight that they would bear while being active.
How much bearing do someone's knees and back have to actually do to spend most of their time sitting on said 300lb ass?
They may, although I doubt it, be getting a stimuli to adapt when they do actually move their 300lb asses around with the "new" weight, but the "recovery" time they give themselves between "sessions" is so great that they have already lost any gainz they might have made from the previous effort by the time the next effort rolls around.
Go to the mall and watch some genuinely obese people. It's like watching a baby learning to walk or something....except the baby is going to progressively add the amount of time and effort they put into walking while the obese person is doing exactly the opposite. I would also imagine that the extremely obese folks have issues where their sheer mass forces them to move in ways that provide pretty bad leverages. Maybe they could adapt to this as well with repeated and regular doses, but they don't get them if their sedentary.
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