Monday, September 26, 2011

Prevent knee pain

The knees are the most easily injured part of the body. The largest and most complicated joint, the knee is used for everything from standing up, sitting, to walking, running, etc. It's a weight-bearing joint that straightens, bends, twists and rotates. All this motion increases your risk of acute or overuse knee injuries.
Prevent knee pain by keeping the muscles that support your knees strong and flexible. Start out slowly. Walk before you run - before you engage in a strenuous high impact activity such as jogging or running, try walking for a week. If walking causes knee pain, you shouldn't be running. Warm up and stretch before working out. Give your body a chance to recover from exercise. If you do high impact activities take every other day off. Avoid running up and down stairs and full squats. Doing knee exercises to strengthen and stretch the muscles that support the knee are vital for knee pain and injury prevention. Proper footwear is also important, especially if walking or running on hard surfaces. Keep your weight under control. Reducing one's weight reduces stress upon the knee.
Most knee pain is treated conservatively, but there are situations in which surgery is required. Athletes are at an elevated risk for sudden injuries that may require surgery, such as torn ligaments in the center of the knee or certain types of fractures. People with advanced knee osteoarthritis may need knee replacement surgery if they are severely limited in day-to- day activities because of their condition. This is optional surgery and is a last resort.
Most knee conditions respond to a combination of non-invasive treatments such as applying heat or cold, temporarily restraining from activities that aggravate pain, and medications that target pain and inflammation. Exercises to strengthen the muscles that support the knee help reduce stress on the knee joint and prevent re-injury.
Wouldn't it be great if you can wake up the next day without any knee pain? It would be awesome if you no longer had to put up with knee pain right? Well guys, it's like the saying goes, "there are no overnight fixes" and this is true with almost everything. But fear not, there are ways, moreless uncommon, to relieve knee pain. Just listen in and follow these steps to relieve your pain. Write these down for future reference.
Strengthen The Knee
It's simple logic, to make anything in your body pain free, make it stronger. To relieve your leg pain you make it stronger, to relieve tension you stretch etc. A good way to strengthen your knee is to strengthen your quadriceps. The strength of your quadriceps directly relates to how stable your knees are, the more strength in the quads the better your knee will feel. To safely and painlessly strengthen your quads, do cycling, preferably in a stationary bike with resistance. Cycling has zero impact on your knees, which makes it the best way to make your knees stronger. Try cycling for about 15 minutes per day. You'll find it quite helpful.
Keep The Knee Relaxed
To keep your knee relaxed make sure it's fully extended but not forcefully extended, that would cause more knee pain. To reduce any swelling elevate and ice it for about 15 minutes. This helps relieve pain by restricting blood flow. When you sleep, be sure to place a pillow or two under the knee with pain.
Massage Your Knee
A very effective way to massage your knee is to slowly move your patella in a circular motion. Try to do it rather slowly, gently, but firm, this loosens unstable tissue within the knee and helps get rid of it. Sometimes pain is caused by scar tissue in the knee. This procedure helps with healing the scar tissue.
Wear A Knee Brace
For those who have knee pain during the day, and most people do, try wearing a brace. It helps with keeping your knee stabilized while walking. Keeping your knee stabilized is vital to reducing your pain because the reason the knee hurts is because some sort of motion or movement damaged the knee. Stabilizing it can help heal scar tissue as well.

No comments:

Post a Comment