How to Deal with Knee Pain

Last Updated on August 30, 2020

Knees are one of the essential organs of the human body that allows walking or running smoothly. Like other parts of the body, you may feel pain on knees. If you walk or run in downhill or uphill, or place your feet in the wrong position in outdoor activities like hiking or sports or athletics, you may be caught by knee pain.

How to Deal with Knee Pain

Knee pain occurs if the cartilage of the joints wears away. It may cause by a deformity of joint or repeated injury or the stress of your excess weight of the body. Knees are the largest joints of the body, but these are one of those joints which can be damaged easily.

The most commons knee injuries are ligament sprains and cartilage tears. If you caught knee pain, your motion of movement would be hampered. So, it is critical to deal with it. If you are a walker, a runner, or a hiker, you must have to know about dealing with knee pain. Symptoms, causes, and treatment for knee pain are described below.

Causes of Knee Pain: Knee pain can occur for various reasons like trauma, medical, obesity, gout, and Degenerative tissue disorders. These issues are described briefly below.

Trauma

You may be caught by knee pain if you fall from a height or receive a blow directly to your knee or make a sudden change in direction or even make repetitive movements during sports. All of these are the cause of traumatic knee injury.

If you face this causes, your kneecap may get dislocated, you may have a fracture at kneecap or femur or tibia, can tear a ligament or tear meniscus. As a result, you may get injured and put your knee under extreme strain. If you don’t treat your knee properly, you will survive in chronic pain.

Medical

You can get affected by long term knee pain by accident or from medical conditions like arthritis. Medical conditions that can drive you to knee pain are degenerative tissue disorders, infections, autoinflammatory diseases, inflammation of tendon, bursitis, or others.

Obesity

The excessive weight of your body can lead you to knee pain, which is called obesity.

Gout

Gout is one kind of metabolic disorder. People who carry grout experience knee pain much. Uric Acid crystals build up at the joints if someone gets affected by it. As a result, painful inflammation happens, and this also affects knee movement.

Survivors of Knee Pain

Almost all people survive in knee pain. But athletes, runners, sportsmen, and hikers have to face this problem very much.

Athletes

Athletes have to remain physically active and participate in various sports. As a result, they have to experience pain at the front side and the center of the knee. This is called adolescent anterior knee pain. It is a common problem for healthy young athletes, especially girls.

If you overuse your knees or there is less adequate stretching, you may get affected by this problem. Proper rest, therapy (heat and cold), over the counter medication and strengthening exercises can relieve you from knee pain.

Hikers

Hikers have to move using their legs in different types of situations. As a result, they get caught by knee pain sometimes. There are many ways for hikers to prevent knee pain.

Firstly, you can reduce the weight of your backpack. Legs carry the weight of the body. Moreover, the weight of your backpack puts more pressure on your leg. Knees allow you to move. If you put more pressure on your legs, it will affect your knees. So, reduce the weight of your backpack to avoid knee pain.

Secondly, you have to be more careful while moving towards downhill or uphill. That places are not plain. When you walk on the downhill, your body puts more (about 7-8.5x) pressure on your knees. Your knees can’t carry this overloaded pressure. As a result, your knees get affected by pain.

At third, you can use hiking poles to avoid knee pain. These poles are designed to provide you additional support and stability when you are moving downhill or uphill. As a result, you remain safe from knee pain. You may use a knee brace to keep your knees safe from pain.

These provide much stability and range of motion that decreases pain on the knee. Knee braces are used to stabilize your knees. Like athletes and hikers, runners and athletes can also get affected by knee pain. There are so many ways to prevent knee pain. Some of them are described below.

Loss of Weight

Or knees help our leg to carry the weight of the body. People who contain excessive body weight, easily get affected by knee pain. When you walk throw the stairs, your body puts more pressure on the knees. As a result, knee pain occurs. So, losing extra body weight is an excellent solution to prevent knee pain. If you can reduce 1 pound form your body weight, you’ll be able to cut 4 pounds of pressure from your knee.

RICE

RICE is a short form of Rest, Ice, Compression, and Elevation. These are some great ways to prevent knee pain. After work, you have to take rest. The time of rest may vary, but you must have to take rest at least for one week if you get knee pain. All muscle strains or sprains are micro tears of the tissue. Those take at least three weeks to get recovered.

Ice therapy is another way to prevent knee pain. Take a bag of ice or cold pack and put that on your knee for 20 minutes. Do this 8 times per day. But don’t hold that on your knee for more than 20 minutes. Otherwise, it will cause frostbite. To avoid freezing, surround the ice pack with a towel and feel more comfortable.

You can use a compression bandage. It can reduce swelling, which causes pain on the knee. Elastic wraps like Ace bandage. Air casts, special boots, or splints are included in it.

Another way to reduce swelling is elevation. In this way, elevate your leg on a pillow which is located above the level of your heart. You can use this for the first day to control the swelling.

Final Words

You have to give enough rest to your knees to keep them well. Always remember that knees are the important joint of our body, which carries the whole weight of the body and allow us to move on. If you get affected by knee pain, apply the steps described here.

These ways will give you comfort. But, if you feel much pain than go to a doctor as soon as possible. Strong knees can keep you moving on. So, be careful about moving, and treat your knees very well if you caught by pain on those.

 

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