Every runner considers injuries to be their nemesis. These can vary from minor niggles to fractures and can side line runners from their practice, performance and passion for days, weeks or sometimes even months leading to them requiring rehabilitation and graded return to running.  

Within musculoskeletal physiotherapy, adherence to exercise programs is a challenge and generally adherence has been reported to be in the range of 50% and can be even lower for unsupervised home exercise programs. If you don't take your medicine, its likely not to have its desired effect. Similarly, if you do not adhere to the prescribed exercise program, it is likely that effect of exercise program will be sub-optimal. 

It has been a long standing myth amongst non-runners that running (specially long distance running e.g. marathons) can cause arthritis and damage the knees. Infact one of my friends who is an ergonomist and occupational therapist also said the same thing to me. She is an ardent cyclist and swears that pounding the knees on the roads is not her idea of exercise as its going to have a significant impact on her knees and leave her with early onset of osteoarthritis in the knee. She has even encouraged me to consider giving up running and take up cycling as an exercise instead as it is potentially less strenuous for the knees.

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are a group of disorders of the heart and blood vessels and include coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease - disease of the blood vessels supplying the brain, peripheral arterial disease – disease of blood vessels supplying the arms and legs, rheumatic heart disease – damage to the heart muscle and heart valves from rheumatic fever, caused by streptococcal bacteria, congenital heart disease - malformations of heart structure existing at birth deep vein thrombosis and pulmonary embolism – blood clots in the leg veins, which can dislodge and move to the heart and lungs.