Change the way you walk to avoid pain and improve your mood

FEW of us give much thought to how we put one foot in front of the other, but scientists are investigating whether changing the way we walk can protect our physical and mental health.

One promising focus is on how altering our gait can reduce our risk of knee arthritis. The most common type is osteoarthritis, which typically begins in middle age and gradually leads to the destruction of cartilage.

Cathy Holt, a professor of biomechanics and orthopaedic engineering at Cardiff University, is studying how the way people walk can trigger this. She believes that teaching people to change their gait in middle age may save them decades of pain – and the need for later knee replacement surgery.

Put simply, walking with your knees too far apart, or too close together, can put excess strain on the inside of the knee.

“Some people may be naturally a bit bow-legged or knock-kneed,” says Holt.

“However, the way people walk may be affected by a small injury such as a cartilage tear or deformation. As a result, their knees are pushed out from their proper alignment when they take a step.”

Such overloading of one side can trigger a cascade of cellular damage.

In healthy knees, the cartilage and joint bones stay in constant communication, with the cartilage instructing the bone to release new cells that rejuvenate tissues to compensate for wear and tear. “If your tissues are being loaded as they are expecting to be loaded, the system works well,” says Holt. “But when you overload it, this changes the signals between the tissues and they respond badly.”

The system then over-produces osteoclasts – cells that break down tissue as part of the normal process of our bones renewing themselves. This overproduction degrades the bone joints and cartilage.

“At the same time, the system also overproduces cytokines – immune cells that cause inflammation and the classic burning arthritis pain,” says Holt.

She and her team are researching gait-correcting retraining therapies, for people in their 40s and 50s.

“We ask them to walk with different styles – such as with a wider gait – to see if that can make a beneficial difference,” she says.

Other studies suggest that changing your walking style could also help prevent depression.

Dr Robert Briggs, a specialist in geriatric medicine research, says people with poor gaits are likely to get less exercise, probably because they find walking onerous, and it’s known that walking energetically may protect against depression.

Another study has shown that if we walk “happy”, we can boost our mood.

In 2014, Dr Nikolaus Troje, a motion biologist at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, trained 39 volunteers on treadmills to develop happy or sad gaits, with an upright or slumped posture.

They had to memorise positive and negative words. Those in the “depressed walk” group remembered many more negative words.

“The difference in recall suggests the depressed walking style actually created a more depressed mood,” he says. |