Are Your Knees Your Achilles’ Heel?

By Denise Foley for Completely You

At some point, if you’re a woman, your knees are going to bring you to your knees.

Women’s knees are our Achilles heel, more likely to be injured, worn out and replaced than men’s knees. And it’s something that even young women need to be concerned about.

A new Oxford University study published in Arthritis & Rheumatism found that nearly two-thirds of women age 50 and older experience knee pain at least once, intermittently, or all the time, and that the risk of having achy knees grows as women get older. Read a synopsis here.

In fact, just being a woman predisposes you to knee problems. We have a wider pelvis than guys to accommodate pregnancy and childbirth. That means our thigh bones connect to our knees at an inward angle that makes the knee more prone to injury. Then there’s our narrow anterior cruciate ligament (ACL). That’s a band of fibrous connective tissue that passes through the notch at the lower end of the thighbone that forms the upper part of the knee. It’s about 20 percent narrower in women. The result: Greater risk of tears.

And to add injury to injury, a woman’s hamstring muscles -- the ones at the back of the thigh -- are weak in comparison to the quadriceps, the muscles in front of the thigh. That imbalance gives your hamstrings more pull toward the back and your quadriceps less pull toward the front. I don’t think I have to tell you why that’s a bad thing. Ouch!

Finally, the risk of knee pain grows as women grow bigger. No surprise here: Weighing more and having a higher body mass index (BMI) is linked to increased risk of pain, particularly arthritic pain, in weight-bearing and often overworked joints -- not just in the knees but all over the body.

So What Do Women’s Knees Want?

• A little less weight to carry. Be smart about it. Combine a good lifetime diet program (e.g., Weight Watchers) with workouts designed by a pro to help you burn calories and build up your muscles (which will help you burn even more). “It seems that as long as there is no actual trauma to the knee, moderate exercise has a beneficial effect on pain and disability,” says Anuskha Soni, one of the Oxford researchers.
• Stronger leg muscles. Work on hamstrings and quads equally to reduce the imbalance. One easy hamstring exercise is the curl. See how to do it here. Start without weights, and then add small leg-weights, increasing the weight as the exercises become easy to do. If you’re new to exercise or have knee pain now, talk to your doctor first. You may want to try water aerobics classes where you can work on full-body fitness with the cushion of water to reduce the pressure on your joints.

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Denise Foley
  is Completely You’s “News You Can Use” blogger. She is a veteran health writer, the former deputy editor and editor at large of Prevention, and co-author of four books on women’s health and parenting.