WHY BEING A WOMAN OR WORSE A WOMAN WHO LIKES TO SKI CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR KNEE HEALTH WOMEN AND THE ACL

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What is an Anterior Cruciate Ligament and How do You Tear it Anyway?..If You Ski or Play Football You May Already Know the Answer

If you are a woman than your knee is at increased risk of injury and if you are a woman skier than I sure hope your health insurance is current. At least that's the impression I get from the literature about the infamous anterior cruciate ligament knee tear. The knee is one complicated joint. Apparently the knee is even more complicated in women since they seem to get more anterior cruciate ligament tears than men. It's unclear why women suffer ACL tears more often than men. Some experts think the female anatomy may leave women more vulnerable. Others say the female hormone estrogen may weaken the ligaments.


I saw a newspaper article that claimed that the most common serious injury in skiing is a tear of the anterior cruciate ligament. But wait a second... What's a ligament? And what the heck is an anterior cruciate ligament? A ligament is a band of tissue that helps holds bones together or connected at a joint. The knee joint is packed with various ligaments and cartilage shock absorbers called menisici or meniscus for singular. There are knee ligaments as well as knee menisici. The ligaments bands help to stabilize the knee. The anterior and posterior cruciate ligaments criss cross the knee joint. That's why they are called cruciate. For the knee to operate properly the ligaments and the menisci need to be intact.

Why does Twisting Tear the Anterior Cruciate Ligament?

Twisting of the knee that typically causes an ACL injury happens in skiing as well as football, basketball and soccer. "A football player, for example, might twist his knee running in a zigzag pattern or have it hyper extended during a tackle". In basketball, for example, a would be Michael Jordan might plant his/her foot and then quickly change direction, turning the knee too far.



As I said, anterior cruciate ligament tears are a frequent knee injury especially in sports. "Orthopedists at leading medical centers estimate that several thousand children and young adolescents are getting A.C.L. tears each year, with the number being diagnosed soaring recently. Some centers that used to see only a few such cases a year are now seeing several each week".



"As many as eight times more girls than boys are suffering the acl tears, doctors report. In fact there have been reports that women who play sports are more susceptible to anterior cruciate ligament knee injuries". Twisting motions can cause a tear of the anterior cruciate ligament, scenarios such as when the foot is firmly planted in the ground and the knee is pointed in another direction.

Why are ACL Tears in Skiing Going Up and What May Help.. A New Device

According to a study even though skiing is getting safer overall, "ACL tears soared by 103 percent from 1972 and 2006"." The focal point in ski safety is the ACL "and
"not surprisingly a lot of people have tried to solve the problem...Others have tried to combat the anterior cruciate ligament problem by redesigning the ski binding...A new device called the KneeBinding was shipped to certain ski stores..This binding sense and reacts to the signature load that occurs just before the ACL tears, said Rick Howell, a former college ski racer who invented the KneeBinding."

Avoiding the Dreaded Knee Pop