Pain and Knees

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

Pain is a fact of life, part of the warning system we all have to tell us we are doing something in an area of our body that maybe we should not be doing. The problem is that while it is often an important warning, it is also often simply the body not wanting to do something. If you want to be a runner, you are going to feel pain as you build up your endurance. If you want to be a weightlifter you will feel pain as work your muscles to greater and greater levels. If you want to be a ballerina you will learn to live with agony in your feet and a smile on your face.

We often learn to endure pain simply because it pleases someone else, or because the reward for enduring the pain is perceived as worth attaining.

Of course, pain is easier to endure and get past when you are younger. We may be "thinking animals" and "aware of our mortality", but we often fail to perceive that the immense damage we are voluntarily inflicting on ourselves when we are younger may make our later lives far more painful than they need to be.

I had a good pair of legs, and am pleased that they still work well enough to get me around, but I am no longer able to run for fear of a complete failure of my knees as a result. This also puts limits to how much I can carry as extra weight puts more strain on my weakened knees. There is a certain amount of pain associated with them on an almost daily basis now, and that is probably going to get worse as I get older. This is a penalty I am paying for abusing the bones, muscles, and ligaments in my knees when I was younger.

The human knee is a magnificent design in doing what it does, but it is also a very flawed design. Keep that in mind as you go through your days, and try to keep from abusing them as much as you can.