Considering knee replacement surgery? Exercises can be a non-invasive solution…learns more…
Saturday, 29th May 2021
The knee joint is the largest of joints in the human body and is used each day most heavily. While undertaking activities such as running, walking, jumping, or climbing our knees are compelled to withstand a lot of pressure. The result is that it is prone to injury, wearing out, and pain. Knee pain can affect just any age group but with aging, the risk increases further. Bone erosion triggered by the normal aging process can cause excruciating knee pain making movement rather impossible. Frustrated with knee pain, many people often go for knee replacement surgery. According to the 2019 stats, more than 1, 20, 000 such surgeries take place in India each year. Exercising is an effective alternative to knee surgery and can relieve knee pain to a large extent. Getting rid of knee pain through exercises is a much easier and cost-effective means when compared to the surgical procedure. In the latest research, it was suggested that even just one exercise a couple of times per week can allow managing knee pain thereby dropping the need for surgery.
QUADX-1, the latest study attempted to analyze the advantages of therapeutic home-based workouts and the manner in which such workouts can help in bashing aside the need for knee surgery. For this study, the research team grouped the research participants into three major groups. The participants in each of the three groups were all sufferers of knee osteoarthritis and were eligible for knee replacement surgery. The average pain score for the participants in each of the three groups was 3/10 across the past one week and the participants were about 45 years of age.
All the three research participant groups were allotted as many as 12 exercise weeks but there were differences in the number of exercise sessions per week across the three groups. The sessions were numbered as 2, 4, and 6 across the three groups of research participants. The interesting part of it was that they all practiced one single exercise; i.e. knee extension.
Also Read: Alcohol and Brain Health: Alarming Facts.
Performing a simple knee extension exercise can allow the body to develop resilience as well as strengthen the tissues and muscles surrounding the knee. The main reason why researchers assigned the participants just one exercise is that the poor form that is associated with home-based exercises in most cases can only worsen the pain on the knees. Assigning a huge lot of exercises could only end up making things utterly complex. The participants did not use any sort of machinery to perform this simple exercise. The only thing they made use of was a chair. At the conclusion of the research, the participants of all three groups noticed that the strength of their quadriceps increased irrespective of the total number of repeats performed. Doing that single exercise just twice per week brought about the same kind of improvement in knee strength as well as pain when compared to 4-6 times per week.
For doing this exercise, the participants got seated on a chair with an exercise band’s one end wrapped closely around their ankles. The exercise band’s other end was fixed at the back of a door to allow it to function similar to an anchor. Grabbing the band was strictly not allowed. Each repetition of the move was of a total of 8 seconds duration- 3 seconds for leg extension, a pause of a second once the leg has been lifted, and four seconds duration for lowering of the leg.
The News Talkie Bureau
Source:
TimesofIndia Indiatimes