No subject

knee is stable without significant previous ligamentous injury, the
incidence of ligament tears with a brace on and without a brace is the same.
However, the braced knees have more devastating injuries.  Why?   With a
given deforming force, a brace will absorb some of the energy, but when it
fails, it suddenly gives and the ligments aren't preloaded and there is more
injury.   Without the brace, our ligaments are like bungie cords or
shock-absorbers, as a force is applied they begin to absorb it.  Most of the
time that is the end of it, but if the force is great enough, the ligament
then ruptures.    SUDDEN stops have sometimes unimaginable forces.

Another orthopedic fun-fact is that in a normal knee, the biomechanics show
that there is SIX times your body weight going across your knee with every
normal step you take.   This is because of the force on the lever arms of
the femur & tibia as well as the forces of the muscles compressing the joint
to make it function properly.   When you run, the force (kinetic energy) is
3 - 3.5 times the walking force, or up to nearly 20 TIMES body weight with
EACH running step!

If you are overweight, say by 50#, that is 300# of EXTRA stress across the
knee for every step you take.   The average person takes 4 million
steps/year.   So for that extra 50#, that is 1.2 BILLION extra pounds across
the knee in just ONE year!   You can interpolate pounds and years
accordingly.

The forces across the ankle are 4-5X body weight, 3 - 3.5X for the hip, etc.
Holding 10# straight out at arm's length puts 7-8X body weight of
compression force across the shoulder joint.

 

So, be careful out there (or UP there as the case may be) !!!!

 

 

The new towers/antennas were stress tested this morning as two back to back
lines of thunderstorms rolled through.   All towers and antennas are just
fine, but several trees blew down as did our garden fence!   Thanks again
for everyone who helped a couple weeks ago!!!

 

 

73!

Glenn W0GJ