What is the substance to keep your knee young?
A lot of knee pain is caused by osteoarthritis of the knee which is a disease that the joint cartridge playing a roll of cushion is broken down. The main cause of osteoarthritis of the knee is aging, so many people give up the improvement of the condition.
But there is a substance which makes your knee younger, that is proteoglycan. The more you have proteoglycan in your knee, the younger you can keep your knee, resulting in reducing the knee pain.
Fig. 1 shows the knee joint without knee pain and the blue part is proteoglycan.
On the other hand, Fig. 2 shows the knee of 70s women who has knee pain. The blue part of proteoglycan is lost and there is a lot of red part.
What is the function of Proteoglycan?
The joint cartridge is mainly composed of cartridge cells, collagen and proteoglycan. Proteoglycan stores water. The joint cartridge is like a sponge storing a lot of water. When the knee is pressurized, the stored water comes out of the cartridge and absorbs the shock. Once the pressure is released, the water goes back to the cartridge and proteoglycan store the water.
If proteoglycan decreases due to some causes, the cartridge can’t store water, losing the cushion and the cartridge breakdowns with pressure.
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