I rehabbed people who had total knees and hips. I remember reading a study that claimed that runners had less knee replacements than their sedentary peers and that runners had better mensicus in the knees as well. I want to say the research was from either the Cooper clinic or a hospital in Dallas, Tx. Hope that helps or at least gives you a place to start.

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Brian Stover USAT LII
Accelerate3 Coaching
Insta

From what I've read and seen the most damage seems to be done either from contact sports such as football, rugby, etc or from sports that over stress the joints such as gymnastics or ballet. It's known that weight bearing exercise can strengthen the bones and even perhaps delay the development of osteoporosis in those predisposed but running also stresses the hip and knees joints. The jury is probably out on this one, but I would agree that being over weight and sedentary is likely even worse.

Ok, since no one has been replying...

Theres a good deal of studies out there supporting beneficial effects of running. Do a Pubmed search, or search issues of Journal of Applied Physiology (pdf articles used to free on the net, dont know if they still are, but you can find abstracts) Anyway, there's heaps of those.

"Problems and lingering injuries" is a very broad definition which, of course, you wont ever find a study of. Lets say youre not talking about accidental running-associated injuries, such as getting hit by a car, or twisting your ankle, but chronic physiological/anatomical changes due to long-term runnning: SO:

One thing that has caught my eye lately is possible association between lone atrial fibrillation and endurance exercise. Apparently, longterm hypertrophy of LV (plus other yet unknown factors) may predispose to lone Afib, perhaps by altering Ecurrent pathways due to 'extra' LV and septum mass.

Also, with 'athlete's heart', LVhypertrophy, there's usually associated valve leakage/prolapse, however, this does usually go back to normal after cessation of high level training...could this be pathological if training never ceases? ie, "problems and lingering injuries when done for many years." dunno bout that.

hmm, all I can think of right now, all other changes I can think of off the top of my head are protective...



Ziva