‘Jogging without prior exercise damages knees’

New Delhi, April 24 (IANS) Jogging without any proper prior exercise or knee activity can damage the knee joints requiring them a long duration for recovery, said joint replacement experts.

According to them, anyone willing to start jogging should walk for two months, which will help in the increase of flexibility of the body and the knees preventing any kind of strain to the knee joints.

"A lot of people directly start jogging to get rid of fats in the body without performing any sort of exercises. This leads to the damage of the knees, leading to severe pain," said Palash Gupta, an orthopedician and joint replacement expert at Max Super Specialty Hospital.

He said that the prevalence of such cases among women stands at 70 percent.

"Most of the exercises aimed to reduce fats affect the knee. They create a gap between the joints and knee. If the patient does not get the correct treatment on time then surgery can be the only resort," Gupta said.

Agreed Rajesh Malhotra, orthpedician and knee replacement expert at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, and said the weight of the entire body is on the knees, so avoiding any type of exercises for long duration and junk food consumption leads to the increase in weight.

"Even if a person keeps doing morning or evening walk regularly, his or her body becomes flexible and the knees usually do not get affected during jogging. Direct jogging without proper pre exercises can even lead to pain making the person unable to walk and the lack of nutrition even weakens the bones," said Malhotra.

Stating that knee replacement is the only solution in extreme cases, he said there are new techniques available including, the computer navigation through which the 3D imaging can be used to check the alignment of the bones.

He also urged every one to get checked up their bone density so that if there is any type of de-shaping of the bones or joint then that can be known. If a mothers bones are weak then her children are also likely to have weaker bones," said Malhotra.