It’s the Middle Ages know your joints. I’ve spent the last few years learning that many of the party tricks of my youth—pushing my shoulders out of their sockets on a whim, bending my elbows backward—were long-term painful consequences. twenty years high impact sports they have also taken revenge on an imperfect skeleton.
Now I’m gritting my teeth through the little physical therapy assigned movements, desperately trying to save these things that allow me to bend, twist, and move. It’s not the skeletal celebrities—hips and knees and shoulders—that scream at us as we rack up the miles, but the tiny joints that suddenly grab our attention, if not the ibuprofen. Vertebrae and intervertebral discs and between them. Joints between teeth and jaws. Even the anterior pelvic joint, which most people never think about unless they take a beating during childbirth or sports, reveals that it is taking the brunt of life. These movement points become arthritic, stiff. The bones begin to grind against each other. Movements that previously only pulled or created pressure now create pain.
It’s easy to blame the joints. Weak the old Russia We’ve been betrayed by joints so small we never even registered they were there. But the joints are a sign of anatomical victory. They bend so we don’t break.
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These points where two parts of the skeleton meet are so essential to movement that evolution has created them at least twice. Arthropods – crabs or cockroaches –they developed their own version: their joints exoskeletons that allow these creatures to bend and the downpour Our interpretation—the internal skeleton—probably also began on the outside of the body of ancient creatures, as bony scales. Our spinal cords, the things that make us stringy, have a segmented layer of bone around them 420 million years ago Today’s vertebrae are only a 25 joint stack (or occasionally 26 or 24if there is one vertebra more or less). The bones are stacked on top of each other, separated by a spongy cartilage called the intervertebral disc. Before we had lubricated joints came out of the sea. Heck, without them, crawling wouldn’t have happened in the first place. Joints have now changed to allow insects and animals to slide, slide, climb, run. And even fly. Without strong bones and the joints between them, there is no defying gravity.
Joints are more than just another bone. Between most of our joints, we have connective tissue, cartilage and bursae, thin flat sacs of fluid. They cushion and lubricate, helping our bodies bend easily, quickly and soundlessly on the hinges of a rusted door. Non-folding joints still need this cushioning. The joints—and the sacs between each one—allow the skeleton to move and bear pressure, even though that particular joint doesn’t help anyone do their backs.
Many joints go almost completely unnoticed until something goes wrong. It seems, for example, that adult teeth do not need to move in the jaw socket. But, in fact, these dental-alveolar syndesmoses (technically speaking of the small joint ligament between the tooth and the jaw socket) move all the time. They have mechanoreceptors— Ways to measure movement — that process small vibrations that inform the texture of a food. Increased tooth movement, and sometimes the accompanying shaking, is the ultimate warning system that you need to get that nut out asap, please. Crack-free teeth will thank you later.
Our feet balance a huge load on two infinitely smaller points, and they don’t just stand, they point, arch, bend and bend. Because of this flexibility 26 different bones and all the joints between the ankle and the foot. It’s a work of evolution, adapting the flexible feet that supported the trees of our ancestors to the pavement pounding pattern we use today.
In contrast, the pelvic girdle appears as a relatively continuous ring of bone. But it is the union of three bones on each side, the ilium, the ischium and the pubis. At the back, the pelvic girdle meets the sacrum at the base of the spine. At the front, however, there is a joint, pubic symphysis. This joint can move slightly in adults. But what it really does is help distribute the weight and absorb the shock that comes with the weight of the upper body. This joint distributes that mass evenly over your legs. In people who give birth, this joint softens and becomes more flexible. It bends and curves and stretches, creating extra space for the baby to pass through the birth canal. Then, most of the time, it’s back to normal.
Joints are essential to the way we experience the world, and we take them for granted until they start to fail. Arthritis, that painful chronic inflammation that often comes with age, invades the joints between our bones. The bursae become inflamed and bulbous. Grinding food for decades takes its toll on teeth. Years of running and walking take the spring out of our step, and along with pregnancy, the joints of the pelvis and spine wear down.
As we age, the intervertebral discs are compressed by the weight of our years—and our weight. They can protrude into the spaces between the vertebrae, pressing on the nerve roots – herniated disc. The spine bears the weight not only of our youthful indiscretions, but of our evolutionary destiny. When our ancestors were standing, we asked many vertebrae. A stiff spine could not defy physics and be straight, and thus it was curved. We acquired a lumbar lordosis, a balance in the back. Unfortunately, that curve puts pressure on our upper bodies. When sitting, our lumbar spine they are taking loads in between 100-175 kilograms (220-385 pounds). When standing, it weighs between 90 and 120 kilograms (198 and 264 pounds). However, our intervertebral discs bear the mass cheerfully, making it even better answer to the exercise.
When we think of body strength we think of long bones or muscles, things that crack or tear under the worst pressure. In contrast, the joints appear weak because they give way before the bones. But their flexibility is our defense. Every strange tooth movement is a sensation, a broken tooth is avoided. Every hip replacement is the time they haven’t broken. Every step or weight lifted puts pressure on the joints in our bones, and the joints slowly give way. Joints remind us that there is strength in flexibility.
This is an opinion and analysis article, and the views expressed by the author(s) are not necessarily their own. American scientific
