In 2015 I wrote an article on running with OA – you’ll find it here. An article that recently appeared in Runners World got me thinking again about this and I wanted to share the Runners World article, but also some revised thoughts of my own.

Firstly, the Runners World article…

In a recent study, researchers looked at skeletons from three distinct time periods:

1. Prehistoric skeletons
2. Early industrial skeletons
3. Postindustrial skeletons 

They found that incidence of OA in the Prehistoric and Early Industrial skeletons was similar. However, it was almost double in Postindustrial skeletons.  They put forwards a couple of suggestions as to what might explain this – e.g. walking on hard pavements, wearing shoes. However they concluded that:

“But the biggest factor, they suspect, may be physical inactivity. Joints, like muscles, have a use-it-or-lose-it aspect. If you sit at a desk all day, you end up with thinner, lower-quality cartilage in your joints, and weakness in the muscles that would otherwise take some of the load off your joints. The problem, in other words, isn’t too much running; it’s not enough running.”

You’ll find the full article here.

I continued to run for many years after my hip OA diagnosis. In fact, if I’m honest – I didn’t even start running until the surgeon that diagnosed my OA gave me dire warnings about running. He assured me that if I ran I’d need hip replacement surgery within 5 years and severe pain long before that! Initially his warnings frightened me into inactivity, but it wasn’t long before the thought that I could never run (running was something I’d always loathed) was starting to turn into a burning desire – it wasn’t long before I started to feel that life wasn’t worth living if I couldn’t run!

Over a period of several years I had periods where I ran, and times where I thought better of it (usually when injury struck – as I have to admit happened fairly frequently) and decided to work on fixing the muscle imbalances that I was certain were responsible for my OA. I can honestly say that I felt and functioned best during the years that I ran. I was fitter, stronger, happier, leaner….and with total post OA diagnosis running years of perhaps 4-5 years I can honestly say that I got no indication that it was in any way making my hips worse.

However, what I will say is that it did make the underlying muscle imbalance worse.  If you’ve read my book you’ll know that hip OA is almost always associated with a twisted pelvis. That twisted pelvis is a result of one half of the muscles involved in the gait cycle becoming dominant. When you run you re-enforce this pattern.  The consequence of this is that you’ll find it very hard to correct the imbalance whilst you continue to run.  Running never caused me any hip problems. However, it frequently led to things like Achilles tendonitis, bunion pain, plantar fasciitis – even severe shoulder pain! All of these ailments developed as a direct result of the ‘twisted pelvis’. My running mechanics was ‘off’ and this put undue strain on soft tissue.  When I got close to completely resolving my muscle imbalance I stopped running and focused on indoor cycling (spin), cross trainers, versaclimber and stair climber instead. All of these forms of exercise help to get both sides of the body working equally.

So I would add to the conclusions in the Runners World article. Yes, running is good for the joints. It strengthens the muscles and ‘pumps’ nutrients into the joints. However, I would argue that lack of exercise isn’t the only thing that differentiates postindustrial lifestyles from early industrial and prehistoric. It’s not just lack of exercise, but the way our posture is affected by our lifestyle. For example, instead of being on our feet all day we tend to be hunched over a desk or sitting in a car. This alters the resting length of our muscles and in time we start to move incorrectly. Our joints don’t track normally. Just as the tyres on your car wear when the tracking is off, so to do our joints. The joint wear in itself isn’t necessarily a problem. However, the strain placed on soft tissue – muscles, tendons and ligaments – can lead to intense pain and stiffness. In my case at least, and in many of the readers of my book, it’s the soft tissue strain that causes the symptoms that lead to the OA diagnosis. When the underlying muscle imbalance is resolved all symptoms disappear – even though the actual degenerative changes (damage to the joints) is almost certainly still present.

So to clarify my point, my belief is that running with OA could well do more good than harm to your joints and overall sense of well-being. However, in order to correct the underlying muscle imbalance – the twisted pelvis associated with hip OA (running with knee OA is likely to be less problematic) you may need to stop running – perhaps for quite a significant amount of time. However, I would always recommend finding a replacement such as vigorous cycling or versaclimber as the last thing you want to do is lose fitness. When you have OA half the battle is staying fit and strong so that you can cope better with impaired mechanics.