Knee wear and tear, short rules for exercise, and the optimal daily step count
Finding the best running and rehab content on the internet each week so you don’t have to.
What I’m Thinking
I cut my finger slicing bread last week.
The cut is tiny.
But it still hurts like hell.
Lots of injuries are like this.
Pain isn’t always proportional to the actual tissue damage.
Remember that the next time you sprain your ankle.
6 short rules for exercise:
Find what you enjoy
Some is better than none
More is almost always better
Walking counts
Think musculoskeletal AND cardiovascular
The best exercise is the one that gets done
What I’m Reading
The optimal step count for all-cause mortality:
“As few as about 2,600 and about 2,800 steps/d yield significant mortality and CVD benefits, with progressive risk reductions up to about 8,800 and about 7,200 steps/d, respectively. Additional mortality benefits were found at a moderate to high vs a low step cadence. These findings can extend contemporary physical activity prescriptions given the easy-to-understand concept of step count.”
Osteoarthritis is more than simply wear and tear:
“A new review by Lynskey et al. adds to the pile of evidence showing that seemingly mechanical conditions like arthritis and tendinopathy are much more about metabolic health than physical stresses. Physiology and biochemistry more than anatomy and biomechanics.
Take two people with the same physical stresses on the knee and it’ll probably be the borderline diabetic who gets the knee osteoarthritis first.
So what goes wrong with ‘metabolic health’? It’s a mash-up of what most people know as your risk of heart disease and diabetes — all familiar stuff. You know your metabolic health might be mangled when you are ‘out of shape’ — high blood sugar, high blood pressure, lots of cholesterol in your blood and belly fat. You get out of breath taking a flight or two of stairs. All of this going on at once is known as ‘metabolic syndrome.’”
What I’m Liking
My mom was featured on Yahoo News on Sunday.
She’s running the NYC Marathon in November.
Her 7th race of 2023.
One race for each family member she’s lost to Alzheimer’s.
My mom is my inspiration and hero.
You can read the full story here.
Please consider donating to her Alzheimer’s fundraiser here.
One of the cheapest and most underrated pieces of fitness equipment:
The jump rope.
Here’s Dr Rhonda Patrick expanding on some of the benefits:
Thanks as always for reading.
See you next week ✌️