Jogging without prior warm up can damage knee joints: Experts

Jogging without prior warm up can damage or injure knee joints which, in turn, may take a long time for recovery, said experts.
According to them, people should follow a warm up routine to loosen their muscles and increase the flexibility of joints so that these do not get strained and they are able to maintain the proper running gait.
"What happens is that people who want to lose weight suddenly start running or jogging without performing any sort of exercises which may damage knee joints or pull a muscle. So, one needs to warm up to increase flexibility to protect their knees from injury and joint trouble while jogging," said Dr Palash Gupta, joint replacement expert at Max Super-specialty Hospital.

According to him, prevalence of such cases among women stands at 70 per cent.
"Exercise aimed at reducing fat from the body affect the knees by creating a gap between joints and knee. If a patient does not get the correct treatment on time, then they have to opt for surgery," Gupta said.
According to Rajesh Malhotra, Professor, Orthopaedics at AIIMS, if there is weight and pressure consistently on knees, the cartilage degenerates faster but if one puts on weight intermittently, it grows and becomes stronger.
"So when somebody is overweight, constantly their knees are under pressure. Also in such a scenario, if you land up with a heavy impact or jog, you are more likely to injure your cartilage and also suffer pain and early degeneration of joints and cartilage.

"So, if you are repeatedly landing up heavily on your feet you are at risk of damaging your knees. Doing warm up exercises actually stretches the muscle in the body and improves blood circulation and prepares the body for heavy exercises. Also, jogging on a hard floor may cause injury. Besides, one should not jog for more than 6 to 7 kilometers in a day," Malhotra said.