The Effects Of Exercising On The Degradation Of Knee Cartilage Of The Elderly

Nowadays people suffer from different ailments then earlier in time. Most of these ailments are in relationship with ageing. Such as osteoarthritis of the cartilage in the knee. Which will be discussed in this report. Packed in the question ‘What is the effect of exercise on the increase of osteoarthritis on people’s knee cartilage on people aged 45 and higher?’. This question will be divided into multiple compounds which leads to the answering of the main question. Exercising does help to extend the symptoms of osteoarthritis but is not the cure. The conclusion is that exercising helps to remain the muscle strong around the cartilage.

The muscle is incorporated with the joints, bones and cartilage into the distribution of shocks on the body. This eventually leads to a higher tempo of the increase of osteoarthrosis. Introduction (words: 249)Because of a lot of improvement of technologies in the medical world the average life expectancy increased a lot. This causes that people live longer and ageing takes a long that more people will suffer from ailments. One of these ailments is osteoarthritis which becomes more common these days. Osteoarthritis is a disease that damages the slippery tissue that covers the ends of bones in a joint. This allows bones to rub together, causing pain and stiffness. (Health, 2016) The urge for a treatment or a method, to reduce the degrade of cartilage over time, is high. Osteoarthritis could not be researched in detail before because of a lack of technology but since the advanced MRI-scans it can be researched with more detail.

Results of osteoarthritis can be seen such as the cartilage and thereby the degradation of the cartilage caused by osteoarthritis. Which was not possible before the invention of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and so in this short time the researchers could do more specific research to what osteoarthritis is and what the effects are on the cartilage. One of those studies (Roos & Dahlberg, 2005) showed significant improvement that exercising has. So the studies nowadays tries to find a method to extend the symptoms and find a treatment, which can help a lot of people who are suffering from this illness. In advance my research will study the effect of exercise on the increase of osteoarthrosis on people’s knee cartilage on people aged 45 and higher.

Results

Influence of exercising

Everyone knows that exercising is good for people’s condition and helps people decreasing there fat percentage. But what is the relationship between exercise and the increase of arthrosis? Exercising helps to keep people’s muscles in shape and that they remain a seize that is normal. Cartilage sits in between the joints and helps to smoothen up the movement between those joints and helps protecting tissues surrounding it. Common things like walking leads to shocks on bones, joints and muscles. When there is a lower percentage of muscle, the joints and bones have to absorb those shocks more and this leads to increase of arthrosis. Because those bones and joints protect the cartilage. Exercising creates a higher pressure of the joint fluid, between the joints, which results into optimal nutrition of the cartilage. This optimal nutrition takes a long that the cartilage functions better and it helps to absorb the shocks better. (Beckwee, Vaes, Cnudde, Swinnen, & Bautmans, 2013)

So, exercising helps to remain a decent percentage of muscle which eventually helps to protect the cartilage and slows down the increase of the effects of arthrosis and helps the cartilage to perform its function better without getting decreased. Effect on the cartilageArthrosis is de reduction of cartilage. Cartilages function is to prevent frictions between the joints and to help the body with absorbing shocks. Cartilage is buildup with mostly chondrocytes which contains water, fat and glycogen. Water is contained in the chondrocytes because of the working of osmosis. When arthrosis is proceeding, the matrix becomes less organized and the proteoglycan content decreases. Proteoglycan is important in the working of osmosis, so when there is less proteoglycan less water is drawn into the cell. With less water and less proteoglycan, the protection of cartilage decreases, and the collagen fibers are exposed to degradation.

Furthermore, proteoglycan helps with the absorption of shocks on the cartilage, these shocks helps also with building up the pressure to contain water in the cells. When the content of proteoglycans decreases the cartilage comes into a negative spiral of degradation of the cartilage which end eventually in no cartilage any more. (Chou et al. , 2009) In conclusion the effect of arthrosis on cartilage is tremendous and should be extended as long as possible. Aging and decreasing of cartilageAging takes a long a lot of ailments one of these is arthrosis. What is the relationship between ageing and the increase of arthrosis? In the results you can see clearly an increase of arthrosis. (Felson et al. , 1987) There are multiple causes of the notable decrease of the cartilage over time. One of these is the fact that the cartilage itself changes in chemical ways, the capability of holding water decreased and the chains of proteoglycan became shorter. Also, when people are aging their muscle percentage decreases automatically and stiffness of the joints increases which leads to more tension on the cartilage. Because of the long time of shocks on the cartilage over and over again, small fractures become large fractures and this process ends with pieces breaking of the cartilage. Shortened, the relationship between ageing and the increase of arthrosis is very close, because ageing has a significant impact on the tempo of the increasing of arthrosis.

Discussion

All those answers on the sub questions say multiple things. First of all, that arthrosis occurs more in the group of elderly. Secondly, that exercising helps to strengthen up the muscles surrounding the cartilage. Thirdly, arthrosis has a huge impact on degradation of the cartilage. Fourthly, that shocks on the body is not very good for people’s cartilage. So, in final, the effect of exercising on the increase of osteoarthrosis on peoples knee cartilage on people aged 45 and higher is significant, this effect is significant because of the improvement due to exercising on the muscles around the cartilage of the knee which helps with the distribution of the shocks on the cartilage and so slows down the increase of osteoarthritis, muscles and joints and so the degradation will slow down the tempo of arthrosis. This method of extending this degradation will help a lot of elderly people who have a little pain or are noticing that they become less mobile, before they need medication or even need a surgery for a new knee.

This extension could save up a lot of money. Because of a lack in knowledge about the synthesizing of cartilage, manners of synthesizing of cartilage could be a very interesting research topic, while this research could lead to a medicine or method to let the body make more cartilage to strengthen the loss of cartilage caused by arthrosis. Earlier, scientists and surgeons noticed that there are ailments affecting the cartilage and the function of it. Nowadays, they are thinking about methods to extend the real effects of these ailments. In the future there will be a solution to solve problems which are caused by arthrosis. In short, scientists are on the right track to find the solution, but they are not their yet and need to improve a lot, but a good method right now to extend the symptoms of osteoarthritis is found in exercising.