K-STATE EXPERT SAYS KNEE ACHES AND PAINS ARE COMMON

MANHATTAN -- If your knees hurt just looking up at a flight of stairs, then you are one of many people who suffer from knee pain.

"Of all the injuries to the body, knee injury is the most common with a 27 percent occurrence rate," said Larry Noble, professor of kinesiology at Kansas State University. "As we age, knee problems are quite common, and are often categorized as osteoarthritis.

"It's differentiated from rheumatoid arthritis which is a systemic disorder of the immune system," he said. "Osteoarthritis is just the wear or tear, or the breakdown, of the tissue in the knee itself."

According to Noble, although osteoarthritis most often affects knee joints, the ankle, the hip and other moveable joints are also susceptible. He says osteoarthritis affects both people who are active and those who are not.

"It's not like an automobile or a machine, where say you're going to wear out the bearings," said Noble. "The problem comes when you have stresses that are beyond the capacity of the tissues to respond in a favorable way and so injury will result."

He says many times when people are younger and active, they think they have fully recovered from an injury. However, there are always the vestiges of old injuries that come back to plague them later on.

"You need to allow time for the injury to recover, and you need to use the response of pain and swelling of the tissue to guide you," Noble said. "If it's not recovering in a few days, then you need to seek a physician's help.

"The therapies, short of surgical intervention, that physicians administer are designed to facilitate the body's natural healing process," he said. "Oftentimes you can get some guidance from physicians and carry out much of the therapy yourself."

Noble says one the most common causes of knee-related disorders is shoes that do not fit properly.

"Oftentimes people will get a good shoe and they will have it for five years," said Noble. "Well the out-sole may not have worn down but the properties of that shoe and the mid-sole have degraded to the point that they're no longer doing what they're supposed to do.

"So you need to have some common sense here and throw the old shoes away after a year if you do a lot of exercise," he said. "And if you're having problems, an orthopedist or a general practitioner can give some guidance on selecting a shoe that meet your needs."

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For more information contact Larry Noble at 785-532-6979.

April 2000