It is made of a long, thin string of Yoga Yoga challenge breathing In the knee, for example, the normal space between the femur thigh bone and Yoga challenge the tibia is a centimeter or more. But as time goes on, and at any rate by the mid-fifies, the inner part of most knee joints shows no more than seven or eight millimeters of separation. The medial meniscus, the cartilage that lies on the upper inner surface of the tibia, has begun to thin. Does this happen because the cells making cartilage, the chondrocytes, have slowed down? Or is there some intrinsic change in the quality of the collagen that the cells are producing? Is it just that pressures have, over the years, simply compressed all of the healthy elements together so that they take up less space?
Does the underlying bone change on its own? Or are there individually unrecognizable traumas that cumulatively mount to destroy the original arrangement of blood vessels, the subsequent order of the chondrocytes in the cartilage itself, and the matrix of collagen and background fluids until they are no longer adapting to and cushioning the movements of the joint? Do age, strength, activity, hormones, nutrition, exposure to the sun, or even attitude figure into it? The answer to all these questions is yes, but it is a qualified yes: Different genetic combinations and body types make some factors more important in one individual than in another, and variations in some of the factors change the impact of others. For example, if you do not have enough protein in your system, no amount of exercise will nourish the cartilage sufficiently. If you are hyperthyroid, your cartilage will grow beyond its normal confines. But a good deal of low-impact joint movement is bound to improve circulation and range of motion, almost no matter what.9 How Does Osteoarthritis Progress? Cartilage has a unique type of collagen called type II collagen.
