Exercise More Important Than Obesity or Age as a Risk Factor for Knee Osteoarthritis

Osteoarthritis (OA) is the wear-and-tear kind. A recent study discussed in JAMA looked at skeletal remains and found that even after controlling for weight and age, if you were born in a developed country after WWII, you're more than twice as likely to have OA of the knee.

That is to say: a two hundred pound man born in 1945 and who died at 70 is twice as likely to have OA of the knee than a two hundred pound man born in 1900 and who died at 70.

What changed since WWII? Wealth plus automation = less exercise. This is quite consistent with the work done already showing that runners are slightly LESS likely to have knee problems than non-runners. (This should shut up those annoying people telling you you're going to mess up your knees.) As the JAMA editorial states, it's also consistent with evolutionary medicine - that if we behave as evolution designed us to behave - i.e., running around all the time doing stuff and not sitting at home in front of glowing screens - that we're more likely to be healthy.

Safety and Efficacy of Caffeine in Exercise

Boing Boing has a nice post about caffeine and energy drink use in distance running events, and associated mortality. It's not huge, but it's still worth reading. The best part of it is the actual peer-reviewed references. One shows that marathon runners (highly-trained or recreational) reap a 1% boost in their marathon times by using caffeine; so if you run a 3:30 marathon, now you'll run 3:28. Another shows a similarly modest boost in high-impact exercise, as long as you're not already a caffeine junkie with a developed tolerance.

Paleo Workouts: Running and Lifting Outside

"No no, let's move him this way. I've been neglecting my delts this week."

Move Naturally (MovNat) seems to be kind of a hybrid of middle-distance running and high-impact gym-type workouts. More importantly, it looks fun. I might try this. The idea that
is probably a useful vehicle for thinking about fitness, but it has holes, and people aren't consistent iin the way they think about it. Case in point, the subject of this very article talks about eating paleo but then gets inspired by the Tarahumara of Mexico. News flash: the Tarahumara are about as non-paleo-diet as you can get! They get HUGE portions of their calories from corn.

Still, this is the first time I've been intrigued by a trendy work-out philosophy. Because you can do it outside. And it's fun. And it would also seem to correct the deficiencies decried in lifting-oriented exercise (by endurance types) as well as in endurance exercise (by lifting types).

Previous entries on the paleo/lifting vs running debate:

- Paleo Running in Kenya and Mexico Highlands

- Paleolithic humans did eat grains - #1, #2, #3, #4

- The endurance vs. lifting jihad, in paleo terms: #1 and #2