13 Best Treatments For Knee Pain From Chondromalacia Patella

Chondromalacia Patella can heal naturally if you do the right combination of treatments. In this video, I’ll Overview The best 13 treatments that you can do to get your knee feeling better for the long term. My goal in doing this is to help anyone suffering from Chondromalacia Patella, to find a handful of treatments that they can begin to do, and try different ones out to get success.

So let’s talk the first one, ice and heat ice and heat work to give you temporary relief. From knee pain. You can look at using ice or heat as a replacement to taking a pain medication if you use it properly. And if it works for you, because it doesn’t work for everybody. Not everyone gets a pain-relieving effect from ice or heat. And some people do get pain relief from both.

And some people get relief from ice in certain parts of their body and they get relief from heat and other parts of the body. And some use them in combination and so really depends on if ice and or heat work for you. Our best understanding of how this works is that the difference in temperature the cold or the heat, give you a different sensation. And don’t let you feel the pain temporarily.

There’s no solid research on if ice is better or heat is better for knees. And there’s different camps. Some people are staunchly believers of ice needs to be used for knee pain, especially we’re talking about pain in the front of the knee. It’s close to the surface of the skin. And so the idea is that if you put ice or heat on there, the change in temperature can penetrate much easier than deeper tissues.

But in clinical practice, some people just don’t have any benefit whatsoever and some get a lot of benefit. It just depends on each individual number to using a massage gun like this one. I’ve got the massage gun. This is the latest one by Bob and Brad and there’s a link in the description below if you want to check this one out.

But using a massage gun tool like this on your thigh muscles, right here on the front of your thigh is especially helpful if you’re suffering from something like contemplation patella, and I’ll show you why here. Let me get the gun going. In Chondromalacia Patella, your quad muscles are usually too active, they’re too stiff and short. And that causes the kneecap here to be compressed against the thigh bone.

And so if you can relax the muscles here on the front of the thigh by freeing it up with a massage going like this or any other massage tools, it doesn’t have to be a massage. Massage going like this, it could just be a roller tool like a rolling pin type tool, I’ve got one right here. free it up like this works.

Or even just digging in there with your hand or you can use a ball as well. Anything to free up the front of the thigh here tends to relax the muscle which takes pressure off the kneecap, and can begin to give you some quick relief.

Number three exercises that circulate joint fluid. So inside a knee joint, you’ve got a bunch of fluid, they call it synovial fluid in the medical world. But people know what is fluid inside your joint water in your knee that’s always in there in order to allow the surfaces of the knee joint to be well lubricated, so the movement can happen well, when there’s injured cartilage, you need to know that that fluid has nutrients in it that helped to nourish and heal the cartilage.

So if you can circulate that fluid on a more consistent basis, then you can allow the waste products that are being developed as your cartilage is healing to be moved out. And then you allow good oxygen and other nutrients that your cartilage needs to heal to come back into the tissues. And so all you have to do to get this fluid to circulate is move your knee joint in a light, painless way.

My recommendation is to start out with something like tailgate swings where you’re just moving your legs back and forth like this. You’re dangling your legs down and you’re just swinging back and forth. Go for five or 10 minutes and do as much as you can throughout the day especially if your knees very flared up. And this helps you out if you find that you do this for five minutes and you feel a little bit better then you need to be doing this on a consistent basis until your knee pain flares down.

Now this alone is not going to fix your knee pain for the long term, but it tends to help out tremendously with getting you to flare down. If your contemplation patella is very flared up. Number four knee sleeves. Now I don’t have any knee sleeves in the office anymore at this time we sold our last one but I’ve got this knee brace so the difference between a brace and a sleeve is a brace is going to be a little more robust this this one has brackets in it.

You could use something like this if you have contribution patella, but even a sleeve one that doesn’t have any brackets in it when the just slides on your leg can offer some pain relieving effects and can allow you to be on your feet a bit more longer than if you don’t wear the sleeve. Now there isn’t any solid proven research on this. It’s very mixed. As far as the evidence as to whether you need one or not whether you should absolutely put one on.

But I think what you can go by is if you try it out because knee sleeves aren’t that expensive, you can usually get one for under $20 US dollars. But if you try it out and you find that you feel a little bit better than great that might be enough to reduce the amount of medication that you’re on, maybe not even take any and it might be enough to get you to be on your feet long enough to do everything you have to do without feeling as bad towards the end of the day.

Now you need to realize that braces like this are not cures for contemplation patella, they are simply just ways to reduce the pain temporarily. If you’re using a brace for a sleeve, you need to still be fixing the underlying root muscle imbalance problem that’s setting up contemplation patella, in order for you to get the true long-lasting relief from Chondromalacia Patella.

Number five, taping, putting on tape on your leg, of course on your skin. I don’t have shorts on today. But there’s different ways that people put tape on they use several strips, therapists, other healthcare professionals will offer to tape you up. This can be beneficial. There’s some research out there showing that it can reduce pain.

Again, a lot like bracing or wearing a sleeve. It’s not going to solve the long term problem, but it may offer some short term relief and it’s quite affordable. Now the upside to using this is it’s more discreet than a brace so you can easily wear tape under your clothing. Whereas this is challenging to wear depending on how your clothing is. And this is quite cheap, you can get a roll of tape for typically under $10 Depending on the tape that you purchase.

Kinesiotape is a little bit more expensive than most other tapes, but you have to do some research and see the only downside really is that this takes a little more knowledge. And you might need to get some professional help in order for you to properly apply this tape to get the best benefit out of the tape number six, relative rest. In other words, resting but not just doing anything not just sitting on your bed or on your couch and not moving a muscle. You need to move in ways that are okay for your knee.

But that don’t overdo it. That’s a relative rest means. That means if you know you can be on your feet for a certain amount of time. You can tolerate some exercise, there’s certain activities that your knee is okay with, then do all those things. As long as it doesn’t make your knee any worse. That means you’re using your cartilage in the tolerance that it’s able to take right now. So you’re not over stressing it.

Now you’re not resting if you’re hurting more at the end of the day, if you keep running into some activity that aggravates your knee and you’re aggravated for a day or two or longer, that is not resting your knee. You shouldn’t be forcing your way through pain or through exercise. In order to fix your knee problem.

That is not a good plan for Chondromalacia Patella in fact, the whole no pain, no gain mantra or that mentality does not apply to healing problems like Chondromalacia Patella. That’s really if you’re dealing with exercise related pain, like muscle fatigue, because you’re pushing into zones of endurance or strength that you haven’t pushed into and you’re going to increase your strength and endurance, then no pain no gain will apply to exercise pain, but joint pain contemplation patella pain, you should not be pushing into, you should only be doing activities that feel good on your knee and that don’t make it any worse.

So that you can allow your cartilage to heal good for the long term number seven here is stop exercising your quads. Now I know this is a treatment list. I’m giving you 13 treatments that you can do but I had to include this one in here because this is one that you don’t want to do. And this is where I need to just explain to you real quick how Chondromalacia Patella happened using my skeleton model.

So here’s a kneecap there’s the back of the kneecap that sort of the conundrum Alicia patella is typically described as being the cartilage in the back of the kneecap gets irritated, worn down frayed, sometimes bone on bone. And that’s when they diagnose you with Chondromalacia Patella. It can also be the cartilage on the end of the thigh bone here.

It’s more associated with osteoarthritis. As this gets worse, they will classify you as having knee osteoarthritis. But if your quad muscles are very, very strong, those quad muscles run on the front of the thigh here and they attach to the kneecap that it’s going to compress your kneecap against your thigh bone and further irritate further compress that cartilage.

So if you can stop doing exercises that tighten up the quads, then you can take some pressure off the kneecap here. The reason I’m putting this in the list though is because many health care professionals a lot of advice that’s out there on the internet and in books and in different areas. Tell people to do quad exercises in order to get relief from Chondromalacia Patella but it’s false information and I have good reasoning for it.

I’ll tell you More than just a bit and you can check out all our videos about Chondromalacia Patella here on this channel to learn a lot more about why you should not be doing quad exercises for Chondromalacia Patella, there’s a line of thinking that the kneecap and the thigh bone are misaligned. And that if you strengthen your quad muscles, you’ll improve the alignment.

But it’s false thinking and you really need to look at strengthening other muscles in order to align the kneecap the kneecap alignment and thigh bone alignment, I think is a real thing. But the healthcare profession at large is looking at it not correctly. If you strengthen your quad muscles. If you focus on exercises that tire out the front of your thighs, you’re only going to further compress that kneecap against your thigh bone, and you may not feel it in the middle of the exercise.

But as your quad muscle gets stronger as the weeks go by as the months go by, it’s only going to further compress the cartilage there and worse in Chondromalacia Patella, so number eight, this is a treatment and this is what you would do to help the quad muscles. You need to strengthen your glutes. If you strengthen glute muscles back here in the back of the hip.

If you strengthen your glute muscles, it repositions the thigh bone the femur, so that the alignment of the femur and the kneecap are good. And that takes some pressure off the kneecap. But it also shuts the quads down a little bit because in the muscle imbalance, the root muscle imbalance problem that’s causing Chondromalacia Patella, quads are over dominant, and glutes aren’t strong enough. And if you can get your glutes to work better work more consistently.

They get stronger than the quads don’t activate as much which takes pressure off the kneecap for the long term. And that is how you get true long term relief. I would call it a cure for Kandra militia patella.

More importantly, if you’re dealing with contra Emily’s patella, now you’re on the pathway to getting osteo arthritis in your knee joint if you don’t deal with this correctly, and fixing this muscle imbalance problem is how you deal with this correctly so that you’re not dealing with osteoarthritis later on and dealing with the potential consequences of osteoarthritis, like getting a knee replacement surgery.

Now I want to let you know that we’ve got some great videos with glute exercises linked down in the description below. Go check those out if you’re looking for ways to exercise your glute muscles to help knee pain problems. Number nine is arc supports.

Now I’m talking about insoles that go in your shoes. And I’m going to show you my shoe here. I love this brand of shoes, my favorite shoe if you watch any of my videos, the shoes that I always have on I buy these over and over again. olukai is the brand. I’ve linked them in the description below. I love this shoe because it comes with this insole. And it’s a simple insole. Mine’s a little worn, I need to get some new ones here soon.

But it’s got an easy arch support here. So I’m talking about arch support on the inner part of your foot. This is the right foot. So it’s got a little bit of support right there. The reason for that is because if your arch is falling down or has a tendency to be more flat, then it’s going to cause your knee to move inwards.

Let me show you what I mean. If your arch is flat, then it’s going to cause your knee to come inwards. And so if you can have an arch support under your shoe under your foot inside your shoe, and you can get a little bit of help right here. Then it’s going to bolster up the arch which puts your shin bone more in this outward position which gets the alignment better here at the knee joint.

That helps to take some pressure off the knee joint as well. Now I’m not saying you have to get olukai brand shoes although I highly recommend them. They’re super comfortable and I love their insoles. But any sort of simple insole arch support that helps you raise your arch if your arch tends to fall down. That tends to take some of the edge off the pressure that’s on your kneecap so that you can help your contemplation patella situation, I’ve linked my favorite art support down in the description below.

So if you’re looking at an art support, I recommend that one number 10 is get stronger toes related to the arches. When your toe muscles get stronger. The muscles that go to you the ends of your toes, they help to pull the arches up. So doing exercises like these are super helpful if you just curl your toes all the way down and hold it for 10, 20, 30 seconds or more hard enough to not make your foot cramp because if you haven’t ever worked on this, then your toes are probably going to cramp or the arches of your feet might cramp and that’s going to potentially be painful.

But if you can do this and get good at it, then you’re in a position to use those toe muscles to create a better arching your foot when you go walk when you do exercise. When you do your everyday motions if you can grab the ground with your toes and elevate your arch here that tends to shove the skin out, which creates better alignment up here at the knee joint, that that improved alignment by getting your toe muscles stronger and using an arch support helps to push up this inner part of the arch here, which shoves the shin bone outward and rotates it out a bit.

And if you’re standing up that turns the knee joint out and gets that femur to line up under the kneecap better. That way it helps out your glutes, so foot muscles and glute muscles actually work together. That’s how we treat our condemnation patella patients here in the clinic we address the foot strength, and of course the glute strength we start with the glute strength usually that tends to be the weakest spot, but we almost always go to the foot strength as well.

Number 11 is injections if you go see a doctor for condemnation patella, or patellofemoral pain syndrome, which is like the step right before you get contemplation patella, they will recommend over the counter medications and then prescription medications, pain medications. And if that doesn’t work for you and you’re still swelling or you’re still getting flared up, then they’ll offer an injection.

It’s usually a steroid injection, because it offers some pain relief as well as anti inflammatory benefits. Of course, this is temporary relief. It’s supposed to last longer than taking medications. Of course, some people have zero effect with it, but many do get some good relief after getting an injection. And there’s other types of injections out there like hyaluronic acid injections, PRP injections, there’s many other options.

We’ve actually made a video that talks all about injections that you can get for conjure Malaysian patella. But those are options for you that your doctor may have, you still need to address the underlying root problem because the injection is not going to fix it. You need to get stronger glutes and stronger foot muscles and no shot will do that for you.

Number 12 is surgery. If you have to take it to this extreme, and you go talk to an orthopedic surgeon about your Chondromalacia Patella, they do have surgical options for you. There’s four main ones that are done. The first one is a lateral release surgery, where they’ll cut the joint lining on the outside of the kneecap here to help reposition the kneecap on the thigh bone.

The second one is where they go in arthroscopically they make little holes, and they clean up the back of the kneecap, the cartilage back there might be frayed or just uneven and they smooth it out. So there’s more easy motion going through the knee joint.

The third one is microfracture surgery, where they go in and drill holes on the back of the kneecap in an effort to regrow cartilage in a more healthy way. That one has some mixed success. And the fourth one the most extreme and invasive one is a patella replacement. So we’ll take this bone out, and they’ll replace it with an artificial one.

Now along with injections, this is just a temporary fix. And you would think that it’s a long term permanent fix. But if you haven’t treated the underlying muscle imbalance and you go get a surgery done, than the muscles are still going to compress that kneecap against your thigh bone even if you have an artificial one. And it’s just a matter of time before you irritate it again.

So treating the muscle imbalance is truly the best thing that you can do to get this treated for the long term number 13 will help you out with that you should consider working with a specialist therapist, one who specializes in treating people without surgery, you have to look in your area to find a physical therapist that specializes in helping people that have not had surgery or they’re not planning on going into surgery right away.

Because most physical therapists are specialized in helping people right after surgery. If you go into any clinic and talk to the patients there or ask the staff, what kinds of cases they tend to see, very often they’ll tell you that they see a lot of post operative knees patients. So they’re seeing people that have had knee replacements meniscectomy, which is a meniscus surgery in the knee.

Other types of surgeries as well like hip surgeries, shoulder surgeries, spine surgeries, and the therapist there are usually excellent at helping people recover from those types of surgeries. However, helping somebody avoid getting into having a surgery is a whole different specialty. And you can’t have certainty that the therapist that’s great at treating people right after surgery is also going to be great at helping people trying to avoid surgery, it’s typically not the case, you’re probably better off searching for a clinic that tends to not see post operative cases.

I’ll give you an example here in my clinic, we get just one or two post operative cases a year. And we usually deter them from coming in if they need to come in to see us for post operative care. We let them know how we’re probably not the best people for them, but they insist and we make sure that they’re right for us and then we can handle them because if you do have a surgery, then going to one of these other clinics would probably be the best thing for you.

But if you’re trying to avoid surgery, then going to a clinic that helps people avoid an unnecessary surgery. Three, avoid relying on injections and medications is definitely where you want to go for Chondromalacia Patella problems.

Now if you can’t get to physical therapy right now or you’re not ready to go out to a clinic just yet. In the meantime, I need to make you aware that we have a 28-day knee health and wellness boost program that’s designed at addressing the muscle imbalance that root muscle imbalance, the one that puts too much compression of that kneecap onto the thigh bone.

This program takes you through a 28 day cycle of doing exercises that are correcting the imbalance to take pressure off that joint so that you can begin to heal the cartilage for the long term. This program is 100% online, you can access it from anywhere in the world that you have a screen and an internet connection.

So you can begin to do exercises to fix your issue. You can find out more details about this program in the link in the description below. Give us a thumbs up don’t forget to share this video with somebody that needs to see this, please subscribe to our channel and turn on the notification bell so that you don’t miss out on any of our helpful videos that we post every single week. Thanks so much for watching. I’ll see you in the next video. Bye