Women PE teachers were also up to three times more likely to have arthritis of the hip, and only one-in-five of all the teachers were still in the job at 60.”The PE teachers were more often subjected to knee surgery, reported more absence from work because of knee disorders, and had to change their work or tasks more often,” says a report on the research in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.The Swedish study is not the first research to suggest a link between exercise and ill health. Doctors at John Hopkins University found that people who suffered knee injuries in their teens or as young adults have a threefold increase in the risk of having arthritis by the age of 65.Other studies have shown an increased risk of arthritis in middle-aged female ex-athletes, and another reported that long-term weight-bearing sports activities like jogging, squash, hockey, badminton and aerobics are linked to arthritis. Two other Swedish studies have shown that high participation in all kinds of sports increases the risk of arthritis of the hip in both sexes.In professional sports the risks are even greater. Researchers at the Centre for Hazard and Risk Management at Loughborough University, who measured so-called lost-time injury rates among the players at two Premiership and two First Division soccer clubs over three years found that there were 744 injuries to the players, and at least 86 per cent of players in each of the four clubs had one or more injuries.”What we found was that the overall level of injury to the professional player was 1,000 times higher than that found in industrial occupations that are more traditionally regarded as high-risk, such as mining and the construction industry,” says Dr Colin Fuller, whose research is published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.Researchers at Coventry University interviewed a sample of nearly 300 former players and found that 49 per cent had been diagnosed with osteoarthritis, a rate that is five times that in non-sportsmen. One-in-three had undergone surgery of some kind after retiring from the game, and 15 per cent were registered disabled.Research psychologist, Dr Andy Turner, said, “The people who we looked at were senior players, some internationals.
Osteoarthritis is normal associated with old age, but some of these players were getting it in their mid thirties. The average age for the start of symptoms was forty.”At Sunderland University, consultant surgeon Professor Greg McLatchie, professor of sports medicine, has first-hand experience of the downside of exercise.”I played a lot of sport. I played rugby and golf to county level, and I was the British universities weightlifting champion Now I am 50 and I have osteoarthritis of the hip. I can hardly walk 18-holes of golf and my friends laugh at the way I approach the golf ball because I have to shake my left leg because it sometimes gets caught. I am also getting problems with pain and numbness in the arm, probably because of neck problems,” he says.”I do put my injuries down to sport. There is no doubt that sport is good for you, but it can also cause problems The problems I think lie in overuse.
Activity is good, as long as it is within the limits of sense.When I was watching the Olympic Games I was stunned how during the triple jump the whole body of the athlete shudders when one leg hits the ground and the other is airborne. The hips get an enormous jarring.”Very severe and consistent training is not good. American recommendations are for walking on a regular basis, and maybe we should only jog three miles, three times a week, because five times a week is a strain. I used to run marathons and I am now not so sure that it is a good thing to do. I think it is too far for most people.”Doctors are keen to point out that moderate exercise is also beneficial, especially for the heart and lungs, and there is also evidence that it improves well-being. Non-load bearing exercise like swimming is also thought to have little adverse effect on joints. Cycling, too, does not have the same pounding affect on the joints as jogging and running.For the couch potatoes who let the jogging generation pass them by, the bad news is that no exercise at all is more harmful in the long run.
Research in America suggests that the health effects of complete inactivity are on a par with smoking 10 cigarettes a day.And those Swedish PE teachers may no longer be able to touch their toes, climb wall bars or throw medicine balls, but they do have less serious disease and better overall health than the non-athletes.. I have under my desk a sackful of pills, potions and supplements sent to me by companies eager for publicity for their curious nostrums. Picking out four at random here is: Kava Kava extract (an aid to relaxation); Powerlean (that’s linoleic acid to you – said to help “significant inch loss” around waist and thighs); Beano (for intestinal wind); and something called Oleomed, which contains virgin olive oil in capsules and is good for the joints, skin and cholesterol level. (Why not buy it by the bottle, I wonder, pour it over a salad and get a double health whammy – and it’s delicious, too.)
I have under my desk a sackful of pills, potions and supplements sent to me by companies eager for publicity for their curious nostrums. Picking out four at random here is: Kava Kava extract (an aid to relaxation); Powerlean (that’s linoleic acid to you – said to help “significant inch loss” around waist and thighs); Beano (for intestinal wind); and something called Oleomed, which contains virgin olive oil in capsules and is good for the joints, skin and cholesterol level. (Why not buy it by the bottle, I wonder, pour it over a salad and get a double health whammy – and it’s delicious, too.)
My mother used to say more than 30 years ago, after slaving over a hot stove, how she looked forward to the day when we would all be able to live on pills. How amazed she would have been to find now we can.My stash grows by the week and I would be happy to give the lot to any reader prepared to make a worthwhile donation to Mencap, the mental health charity.
It would leave me with more leg-room which is also rapidly being eaten up by the growing stack of alternative medicine books under my desk, which I am happy to offer on the same terms to any reader with an empty bookcase to fill.The pills and the books are testimony to the growing presence of complementary medicine in our lives. Everyone is at it and there is a simple reason why: it does no harm.The same certainly cannot be said of orthodox medicine. We all want a risk free-cure and complementary medicine seems to promise just that. The problem is that anything that does no harm is probably doing no good either just because it isn’t doing anything.Never mind, family doctors are now leaping on the bandwagon as they recognise that it offers a cheap and cheerful way of keeping patients off their backs.
