Why the fuck did humans evolve to have such fragile joints? I’m only in my 30s and I already have two permanently fucked up knees that will never heal, from just the smallest injuries. One from a meniscus tear I got in my sleep and another from dropping something that was like 1 pound on my other knee. It makes no sense to me that a giant gaping wound can completely heal in a matter of weeks yet a tiny tear in your cartilage will just stay like that and cause you pain for the next 50 years of your life.

We're too fat and/or sedentary

>>16704118 (OP)
What's your weight, diet and activity level?
>why does my diesel car runs like shit (i've been using nothing but canola oil in it)

>>16704168
I'm 160 lbs and I eat only non-processed foods. But I don't see how any of that is relevant when I'm talking about strictly mechanical damage caused by random minor accidents. From what I understand, cartilage will never heal because there's no blood supply to it. What I want to know is why the human body evolved that way when there's so much of it exposed right under the skin and easily susceptible to damage from outside forces.

>>16704179
>What I want to know is why the human body evolved that way when there's so much of it exposed right under the skin and easily susceptible to damage from outside forces.
It's avascular by "design". It needs to be strong, smooth and compressible, which blood vessels would interfere with. That it doesn't lend itself to very long term use isn't relevant when the body is overwhelmingly more likely to cease function for other reasons in nature, what matters is that performs well up to, during and a bit after reproductive age while the children still aren't self-sufficent.

It's like being a ww2 soldier in Staligrad and worrying about lung cancer from smoking. Smoking won't be what kills you, ut you get to stay a bit more sane with it.

>>16704118 (OP)
>Why the fuck did humans evolve to have such fragile joints?
I don't want to make you feel bad, anon, but not all of us do. I'm in my 50s and my knees are fine, despite growing up working on a ranch, playing rough sports, and jumping around a great deal for many years.
Sounds like you're just predisposed to knee injuries. Fortunately, a lot of that can be fixed these days.
If it makes you feel any better, I went bald at a pretty young age.

>>16704179
>>16704196
Also you still didn't mention your activity level. 160 lbs is fine for a male, and non-processed foods are also good, but well developed muscles around the joints absorb stress that would otherwise go into cartilage. Cartilage gets its limited nutrients through diffusion, and so light compression/decompression cycles from cardio such as walking or swmming help with regeneration, it's the same reason why they become "stiff" from sitting.

>>16704118 (OP)
>I’m only in my 30s
>only
>cause you pain for the next 50 years of your life
Humans aren't evolved to live this long, by 30 you are supposed to already have self-sufficient children, evolution doesn't care what happens after that.
>One from a meniscus tear I got in my sleep and another from dropping something that was like 1 pound on my other knee
This sounds like (You) problem, not human as a specie problem. Vast majority of people don't randomly get catastrophic joint failure in their sleep.

>>16704196
Then why are there nerve endings in cartilage? The torn meniscus I have isn't causing me any actual mechanical problems, but it's annoying that I have to feel minor pain every time I walk up steps for the rest of my life.

>>16704201
>Sounds like you're just predisposed to knee injuries
Both of these injuries were literally just random incidents that could have happened to anyone. The last one happened when I was on a plane because some fucking retard wasn't watching what he was pulling out of the overhead bin and dropped a laptop bag that hit me right in one specific spot on my knee to damage some cartilage. These are ridiculously minor injuries yet they will cause lifelong pain for no good reason.

>>16704214
>Both of these injuries were literally just random incidents that could have happened to anyone.
I've had a ton of random incidents that could have screwed up my knees, but my knees are apparently not very susceptible to serious injury. I have great knees. I'm bald. My eyes suck. My knees, however, are apparently invincible.

>>16704214
>Then why are there nerve endings in cartilage? The torn meniscus I have isn't causing me any actual mechanical problems, but it's annoying that I have to feel minor pain every time I walk up steps for the rest of my life.
Articular cartilage is aneural. Meniscus is made of fibrocartilage and the outer part of it has both nerves and blood vessels. As to why you suffer from chronic pain despite that, it could be many reasons, but typically it's alterations of how forces are distributed due to damaged cartilage, which in turn can cause inflammation/irritation/pinching to surrounding, innervated tissues. Think of a slipped disc, kinda like that.

>>16704220
Whatever the exact reason for it, it just doesn’t make sense that there should be an unhealable body part that causes pain, especially when it’s this easy to injure from doing absolutely nothing.

>>16704228
It does make sense. It provides much better functionality across the board for only a slight hit to reliability and admittedly much lower total service time, but given it's still not likely to be the bottleneck for the entire system, it does not particularly matter. Than you were unfortunate enough to have a freak accident doesn't change this.

You might as well complain that it doesn't make sense for sports car components to wear out so quickly. They need to be that way to perform well enough to be competetive. Believe it or not life in nature is much more competetive that modern society would lead you to believe and better performing, avascular cartilage might have saved your ancestor's life at some point. That he developed chronic pain at some later point in life was not relevant.

>>16704234
If evolution really was so competitive, why didn't all of our organs evolve to repair themselves? What advantage does un-healable cartilage offer? Or not being able to grow back limbs for that matter? From what I can tell, the only advantage humans have over the animal kingdom is our intellect. Everything else seems to a downgrade.

>>16704240
Apparently it doesn't offer a significant enough advantage for every organ to be able to repair itself
I mean the ones that are important can regenerate pretty impressively, like the liver or the brain

>>16704243
>the ones that are important can regenerate pretty impressively
Not really. Teeth are probably one of the top 5 most important things you need to survive, and without modern dentistry they will just rot out of your mouth before you hit middle age.

>>16704240
>If evolution really was so competitive, why didn't all of our organs evolve to repair themselves?
They tend to when it doesn't result in suboptimal tradeoffs.
>What advantage does un-healable cartilage offer?
I already explained it. It needs to be strong, smooth and compressible, which blood vessels would interfere with.
>From what I can tell, the only advantage humans have over the animal kingdom is our intellect. Everything else seems to a downgrade.
I advise you to educate yourself further then. A horse for example is much more prone to serious leg injuries that are also fatal way more often. And can you guess why? Because their legs are optimized for speed and endurance, not reliability and service time. Because as prey animals, getting eaten by a pack of wolves is a bigger risk than a leg injury.

>>16704245
Again, most people have kids by middle age. Limit processed carbs and brush well if you want to maintain your teeth

>>16704245
>Teeth are probably one of the top 5 most important things you need to survive, and without modern dentistry they will just rot out of your mouth before you hit middle age.
Modern tooth decay has a lot to do with the average modern diet, which is unlike what humanity evolved with. Before the agricultural revolution, human diets were much lower in fermentable carbohydrates and sugars, which are the primary source for bacteria causing decay.

Try to go a whole day without brushing your teeth but also eat little to no sugars or grains, you will likely wake up the next day with no film on them.

>>16704118 (OP)
how fucking fat are you to tear your meniscus in your sleep

>>16704214
anon i'm in my 30s. had a torn meniscus in high school. constantly bang up my knees due to being a klutz. and my knees feel great. i deadlift and squat hundreds of lbs, and have resilient knees. you just sound like a bitch. hit the gym weakling

>>16704268
Why would weight have anything to do with it? I probably just twisted my leg in a certain way while sleeping. I didn't even realize it until weeks later since there was no initial pain from it, just minor pain from walking up steps or kneeling on that knee in a certain position, and didn't even confirm it was a meniscus tear until I saw a doctor months later and had an MRI done.

>>16704275
>Why would weight have anything to do with it?
Anon, the cartilage in your knee joints have to bear your weight every second you're standing on your legs. Accelerated wear adds up. This is about as intuitive as it gets.

>>16704276
Well the highest weight I've ever been was 180 lbs.

>>16704277
That isn't too fat, i wouldn't expect that to be a major contributing factor in your case. But i did feel the need to point out that weight can indeed be a major factor for joint issues.

>>16704268
I'm skinny and fit and I had a ligament inflammation in my sleep, I woke up and couldn't even walk.
It's not the sleep in itself that causes it, the damage is already there it just comes out during the night.

Humans are the only mammal that are bipedal 100% of the time meaning a lot excess stress is put on our knees. Mammal bodies are better suited for 4 legged walking.

>>16704118 (OP)
>Why the fuck did humans evolve to have such fragile joints
But we didn't? Unfortunately it's only our ankles.