Walking, running, jumping, but also stapling a bra, putting on a coat, leaning forward to tie your shoes…: our body is an incredibly mobile and flexible machine. This characteristic, we owe it in particular to structures located everywhere on our skeleton, often neglected, even abused: joints. Junction points between at least two bones of our body, these structures are crucial for the sequence of complex movements essential to daily life.
True jewels of natural engineering, they include various elements that make them a well-oiled mechanism: cartilage, synovial membrane that delimits them, synovial fluid, etc.
Joints are fragile structures
However sophisticated they are, our joints are still fragile, because they can be damaged by several factors. Some relate to lifestyle: this is the case of overweight or too intensive sports practice, which can damage our joints and the structures around, causing various damage: micro trauma to the cartilage, sprains, dislocations …
These pivotal areas can also be affected by various more or less serious disorders, favored by trauma, genetics or aging, and which can occur at any age: osteoarthritis, arthritis … Pathologies grouped under the term rheumatism, which designates all joint damage.
Joints are as vital as the heart
However, that a joint “seizes up” and it is all our daily life which can be degraded. Because then disabling pain occurs which can seriously affect the quality of life, our sleep, our mobility, the practice of leisure activities and, by extension, private and professional life. Ultimately, “the decrease in mobility can even result in potentially fatal diseases, such as cardiovascular diseases (heart attacks, strokes) or cancers, favored by a sedentary lifestyle”, underlines Professor Berenbaum, rheumatologist. According to Inserm, when walking is limited by joint damage, the mortality rate rises by… 50%! “Often ignored compared to the heart or the brain, the joints are however just as vital”, insists Professor Berenbaum.
This shows the importance of knowing them well in order to better protect them.
Read also :
- Good everyday actions when you have osteoarthritis
- Osteoarthritis: 5 ways to delay its onset
- Joints: what we don’t always know