HBS Guy wrote:No idea. Always thought so much running would injure joints but thought it might be the ankles that went.
Some idea of what you are going through: have a stainless steel hip and arthritis has started in my shoulders.
Newbie to this forum but this thread caught my attention so I thought that I would chime in.
Never was into team sports at all because I was always a gearhead
and a geek. It didn't help that I was small and skinny for my age until I finished high school when I grew another foot. (The middle one.
) Instead I took up speed walking and long distance walking and I continued to do that with a bit of mountain climbing and sailing.
Then I was misdiagnosed with Sciatica for 5 years that became so bad I was eventually bedridden for a couple of years. I became so frustrated that in spite of all of the testing and xrays and other medical BS the problem only became worse and worse over time. Eventually I went to see a Sports Injury specialist and he came to the same erroneous diagnosis so I asked him why not a single one of these doctors ever bothered to actually look at the source of the pain. He agreed to send me for an MRI with a warning that it would probably just be a waste of time and money. Turned out he was wrong because the ball joint of my hip was virtually rotted away from the inside by a condition called AVN. It took them another year of effing around before they replaced my hip and instantly the major source of the pain was gone. The inflammation is still there almost 10 years later and that will never disappear so I have learned to live it but it is not getting any worse.
Walking again was easy but then I was T-Boned at an intersection in a traffic accident and my back was thrown out. The physical therapist pointed out to me that the muscles on the replacement hip side were virtually non existent and I was compensating by doing all of the lifting work on the other leg. I tried going to the gym and it bored me to tears so I looked for alternatives and found a heated Olympic sized pool nearby and I took up swimming again. That expanded into water exercises and from there I have regained my level of fitness.
Now that I am in semi-retirement I am building my own heated exercise pool that I can use year round. As someone who believes that health-span is the key to a good quality of life lifespan I intend to make use of this pool at least once every other day for an hour or so. That should put me in the sweet spot of the OP study.
