It’s time to break out the lycra if you want to reduce the chance of knee pain later in life.
A new study has found that regular bicycling lowers the chance of knee pain and osteoarthritis.
Study author Dr Grace Lo, from the Baylor College of Medicine in the United States, said rheumatologists often encouraged regular physical activity for the prevention of osteoarthritis, which was the most common form of arthritis.
“However, some exercises are more effective than others. In this study, researchers were interested in studying the relationship between a history of bicycling and symptomatic and structural outcomes of knee osteoarthritis,” Dr Lo said.
Published in Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise, the study revealed that people who participated in regular bicycling over their lifetime had a lower prevalence of frequent knee pain, radiographic osteoarthritis (ROA) and symptomatic radiographic osteoarthritis (SOA).
Dr Lo, an Associate Professor of medicine – allergy, immunology and rheumatology, conducted a retrospective study of people with knee osteoarthritis, aged between 45 to 79.
She said a self-administered questionnaire asked about leisure physical activity over a lifetime, including all bicycling activities, outdoor or spinning, over four age periods of their lives.
“More than 2600 participants completed a questionnaire, with over half of the participants recording a consistent history of biking,” she said.
The study revealed that people who cycled at any point in their lives reported less knee pain, ROA and SOA than those who never cycled.
“Moreover, those who did bike and did so across age periods throughout their lives reported even fewer instances of all three,” Dr Lo said.
“Compared to non-bicyclers, bicyclers were 17 percent less likely to have frequent knee pain, 9 percent percent less likely to have ROA, and 21 percent less likely to have SOA compared to non-bicyclers.
“Additionally, each increase in the number of age periods engaged in bicycling resulted in lower likelihood of reporting knee pain, ROA and SOA.”
