Word: jointing
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...just a bit.) Some experts are starting to think that even the current situation is more dire than anyone had realized. In October, researchers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published the results of the first nationwide survey measuring the total burden of arthritis and chronic joint symptoms. Their sobering conclusion: one-third of all American adults suffer from some type of joint disease...
...understand the latest insights and where they might be leading, it helps to know a little bit about how a joint is put together, and there's no better place to start than with the cartilage. Like so many tissues in the body, cartilage is composed mostly of water. Indeed, you can think of it as a damp sponge. The spongy part contains several important components, including the chondrocytes--cells that generate new bits of cartilage--and various molecules that give the "sponge" its structure and help hold it together...
With every step we take, our moving body puts pressure roughly equal to three times our weight on the knees and hips. As that pressure is distributed across those joints, cartilage is compressed, absorbing most of the load. And, as you might expect with something that resembles a damp sponge, water is squeezed out of the cartilage into the space between the bones. Once the pressure is released, the water flows back into the cartilage, carrying with it nutrients that were picked up from the synovial fluid, which fills the joint. This constant fluid exchange is critical to maintaining healthy...
...created equal," says Dr. Roland Moskowitz, president of the Osteoarthritis Research Society International. Ankles, for example, bear the same heavy loads as knees and hips. Yet most people, unless they're ballet dancers, don't get osteoarthritis of the ankle. Similar discrepancies show up in non-weight-bearing joints as well. The wrist, for example, is much less prone to osteoarthritis than the joint at the base of the thumb...
...could be that ankles and wrists have some mechanical advantage that protects them from osteoarthritis. But preliminary evidence suggests that the real advantage, at least for ankles, is biochemical; that there's something in their composition that allows them to bear greater loads and respond to changes in the joint without breaking down...