Does The Copper Knee Brace Really Work

Have you ever wondered if that copper knee brace really works? Well, I’m going to explain to you today exactly the mechanisms behind the knee brace and tell you if it’s a good idea or not to buy it. This is kind of a review slash, scientific evidence slash physical therapist expert opinion video about the copper brace. And we’re not throwing anybody under the bus in this video just so that you know right away, I’m just going to give you the point on his truth, and you’ll be able to decide for yourself if it’s right for you or not.

Looking for more information about knee arthritis? Knee Arthritis – What Is It & What Can I Do About It

My name is Dr. David Middaugh. And I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso manual physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, fit and active so that they can avoid having surgery injections and medications. Please subscribe to the channel and turn on your notification bell so that you can get notified whenever we release helpful new videos every single week. So let’s get to it.

The copper brace I’ve got it right here there’s tons of commercials about it. They have very famous people advertising on it doing endorsements for a good for them. And you know, it’s a it’s a interesting brace. And I get tons of questions all the time online, internationally from patients here in the clinic as well. About Should I get the copper brace? Is there a difference between the copper brace and another brace? What’s the big deal about the copper brace? Is there something special about the copper?

That’s the biggest question I think everybody’s got. So let me talk about that directly.

First, we don’t have any research that shows that copper itself infused in the fibers of the brace as it says on the package and on the website and all that that it directly makes knee pain better. It doesn’t talk about copper helping a knee problem, heal or reduce the pain. There is plenty of research though showing that knee braces can help with the pain.

So that’s what’s good about it, what the research shows and what the copper company says about their copper braces and they’re not lying when they say it at all. They just it’s just the wording it’s more so what they’re not telling you than what they are telling you or what they lead you to believe all that stuff. It’s not fixing a knee problem.

And the copper itself is not fixing the problem. It’s an anti-microbial which means it helps to not stink as bad It helps to make sure that this brace doesn’t get as dirty as fast, which is good. The brace overall is a decent brace. So the effects from the brace as long as you cinch it down real tight and put it around your knee. It should help to reduce knee problems just like any other brace would.

The added benefit of it being a copper infused brace is that it may not be a stinky or sticky or sweaty as another brace might be but at the end of the day, I would still wash the brace if you’re going to be wearing a brace day in and day out, it’s important to keep it clean. And you know this this brand of braces they do a good job with making a pretty simple to use design there isn’t really complicated stuff on there.

This brace there’s different versions of it. But of the copper brace. This specific one that I got it’s got these two straps that go around your leg and they completely wrap around the front and go round your knee and then it’s got a pocket on the inside. This is the one that I was only one I could find at the store. It’s got this pocket for you to slide in this hot or cold pack inside the brace and so you put it on to give you some relief, so I thought that was pretty cool.

It’s a nifty little trick that you can use and it’s even got these little ears on the sides of a packet so that it fits with the shape of a knee brace and it’s contoured along your so that it so that the gel can contour along the shape of your knee and give you some relief so it says on here that you can use it for hot or cold.

So I suppose you can put it in to the microwave and microwave it I let me hear Let me see what it says here. Yep you microwave it for 20 seconds are no additional 20 seconds so you go for it doesn’t even give you a time. Oh yeah, here it says so one minute 50 seconds or 40 seconds depending on the wattage of your microwave. So looks like you’re not going to go more than two minutes for sure.

Maybe just a minute, minute and a half to heat this up or you put it in the freezer to get a cold and then you slide into your brace and you can put it on with the copper infused brace. So just to show you on the packaging here. There’s our famous football player. He’s actually really good football player, former football player. And you can see here it does not say anything about the copper helping the knee pain, but it does say odor reducing which is accurate and calm. fuse which is also accurate.

So there’s nothing about the copper braces that is helping the pain directly from the copper. The brace itself is important. So there you have it, I would be fine if somebody bought this and decided to use it for their knee problem to get some pain relief 100% I agree that this is better than taking pain medications. If you’re thinking about getting an injection, and you go spend this is less than 20 bucks if you go spend 20 bucks on something like this and it alleviates your pain allows you to get around a little bit better and avoid getting that injection, that’s definitely well worth it.

But there’s still likely some underlying problem that you’re dealing with if you’ve got to meet if you’ve got any pain, so you need to go fix that underlying root problem. It could be coming from the hip, it could be coming from the ankle, sometimes even from the back.

Oftentimes the most common problem that we see feeding into knee problems, especially like an arthritis problem, or a meniscus tear is some weakness up in the hip or some weakness down in the foot. Usually, the hip is more prominent. So I’m going to link here on this video, a video that we did about hip exercises that you can do to help out your knee pain. And then I’ll also put a link to the copper fit Knee Brace here there’s a bunch of different varieties of them.

But in case you wanted to purchase one, because a lot of people are wondering all the time is should I buy one or not, they’re on the verge of buying one they seen the commercials or they’re getting ads on the internet following them around about the COPPER FIT brace. And overall it’s not bad. I buy it if you’re looking to buy a knee brace if you haven’t bought a knee brace yet, it’s fine.

Now, one thing I didn’t remember to say about this is it doesn’t have any braces on the sides, any brackets or hinges. So if you’re looking for a knee brace with hinges, this is not one to get, you’re going to have to spend more money for a brace with brackets or hinges on it, those are going to run you about 50 bucks or more. You can find some cheaper ones with brackets or hinges.

But the reason why you would need brackets or hinges are if you have a meniscus tear, or a ligament tear of some sort. But if you know that you don’t have any tears, if you know that you just have some pain, maybe some arthritis, and it doesn’t mean that you don’t have you have to have like pain, you might have some very intense pain, but as long as you’ve been confirmed as not having any sort of ligament tear or meniscus tear, then a brace like this will be appropriate for you.

Whereas if you’ve got a tear of some sort, you got to go get some other brace that is more substantial that hasn’t brackets on the side. I’ve done another video for that specifically. In fact, I took everybody shopping for knee braces, I went to the knee brace section of a store and in another video, I’ll link that in the description below as well. So anyways, good luck in your knee pain and I hope that you find the right brace for you. Have a wonderful day guys.