Here’s some good news for today: it turns out that riding is good for your knees! A recent study published in the American College of Sports Medicine’s flagship peer-reviewed journal and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health shows that bicycling over a lifetime reduces the frequency of knee pain, as well as symptomatic osteoarthritis and radiographic knee osteoarthritis.
The study included 2,607 men and women with an average age of 64. The participants took a survey about their involvement in 37 leisure physical activities, such as bicycling, and were asked to report if they had engaged in these activities for at least 20 minutes on 10 or more occasions during various age periods. The four age periods spanned from the age of 12 to over 50, to gauge activity across a lifetime. Participants were asked to select their three most frequently performed activities during each age period and provide further details such as the number of years, months per year, and times per month they engaged in these activities.
The survey results showed that “bicyclers were 21% less likely to have X-ray evidence and symptoms of osteoarthritis compared to those who did not have a history of bicycling,” said study author Dr. Grace Lo of Baylor College of Medicine in an article on NPR.
Furthermore, a dose-response relationship was observed: “When evaluating the number of age periods that people engaged in bicycling in relation to the outcomes of interest, for each increase in the number of age periods engaged in bicycling, people had a lower risk ratio of each outcome,” according to the study.
Basically, the more that study participants rode throughout their lives, the better their knees were. If a little riding is good, more riding is even better!
“I was surprised to see how very strong the benefit was,” Lo said. The people who participated in the study weren’t competitive athletes, and since the study focused on 37 different sports, they didn’t intentionally recruit cyclists. Instead, these were “‘average’ people, ranging from their mid-40’s up to 80 years old,” according to NPR. Furthermore, “all of them had elevated risks of developing knee arthritis due to weight, family history, or former injuries.”
While the link was very strong, the study authors note “this is a cross-sectional study, making it difficult to be definitive about assessments of causation.” In order to definitively prove causation, a much lengthier and more exhaustive study would be required.
The study did not address the quality of the participants’ bike fits over their lifetimes, and it is worth noting that a poor bike fit can exacerbate or even cause overuse injuries, which could reverse these effects by damaging the knees instead of helping them. If you want to use, “I’m doing it for my knees!” as a valid excuse for your next ride, first you need to make sure that you’ve had your bike professionally fitted to reduce the risk of unnecessary overuse injuries.
1 Comments
Oct 29, 2024
Then again, I know plenty of people who used to run, developed knee problems, and switched to biking instead. Would be interesting if any of those folks were able to return to running because biking fixed their knees.