Knee Pain – What Works & What Doesn’t Work

Are you suffering from a knee cartilage problem, and you’re not sure about what works and what doesn’t, and you want to get some clarity on that from an expert? Well, that’s exactly what I’m going to talk to you about on today’s video. My name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I’m a specialist physical therapist over at El Paso Manual Physical Therapy. And I’ve been helping people out with knee problems for years and have a pretty good understanding of things that work and things that absolutely don’t work for knee problems.

So if you’re looking for exactly what to do and what to avoid, here’s the video for you, if you’re suffering from a knee cartilage problem, let’s start with the first one. Here’s something that works, using a stationary bike. Time and time again, I recommend this to patients. The reason why is because, for knee cartilage problems specifically, having that repetitive motion that a stationary bike puts you through is very beneficial to move around the fluid within the knee joint.

There’s something called synovial fluid, the joint juice that’s inside of a knee, it needs to circulate. And when you gently bend and straighten out your knee joint, it allows the fluid in there to move around, it’s important to get the fluid to move around because it’s what nourishes the cartilage inside the knee joint, it’s pretty well known that cartilage does not have a good blood supply.

Otherwise, it would heal faster, and you wouldn’t have as much problems with knee cartilage. But it just doesn’t have a good blood supply. So the fluid from the knee joint is what helps to nurse the tissue better the cartilage tissue. So using a bike is great.

The other added benefit of using the bike is that it doesn’t put a whole lot of stress to the knee joints. As long as you’re not super stiff and can’t bend your knee all the way when you’re going through the bike. Or it’s not extremely irritated and just hurts no matter what you’re going to do. Using a stationary bike is pretty good.

A side note of this is I often get asked well how a stationary bike, but I have a bike you can take out on the streets. Is that okay? Proceed with caution on this one, if you feel confident that your knees are going to get worse, if you take a spill, or that you’re going to have to climb hills, depending on where you’re going to go ride your bike, you know, have to push the pedals really hard to go uphill. And that you’re safe to stop and put your feet down real quick without hurting your knee, then proceed.

But if you’re concerned about any of those situations on a bike, you might look at getting a stationary bike or going to a gym that has a stationary bike. There’s also the option of buying devices. They’re called bike trainers in order to turn your outdoors bike into a stationary bike that you can use within the home. So those are all good options to help your knee cartilage. Now what does it work, that would be something that people think of alternatively, to the stationary bike is using a treadmill.

Occasionally, some people can get away with using the treadmill and not making their knee cartilage problem worse. But oftentimes, the way that people walk is one of the problems that has led to them getting their knee cartilage injured to begin with. So walking is just not a good idea. And that goes for outdoor walking too.

Oftentimes, we get people that come in here with knee problems, especially knee cartilage problems. And they say, well, walking is good, isn’t it? I mean, we all need to be walking. So I’m going to go out to the park and walk or I’m going to walk around the block or you know, we’ve been in quarantine time right now. So even just walking around the yard in the house. That’s a good thing for my knee health, right? Well, no, not if you have a big muscle imbalance that’s going to force you to put excessive pressures through your cartilage.

That’s likely what got you the knee cartilage problem to begin with. So we want to avoid using a treadmill or going on walks if you’ve got any cartilage problem, because chances are you’re just going to wear it down worse over time. And it’s sneaky. Sometimes it doesn’t hurt a whole lot if you if you walk lightly. Or if you set the if you set the treadmill to an incline, it actually will make it just a bit easier for you to tolerate walking.

But it’s still not a good thing because it’s forcing to use the wrong muscles. Those muscle imbalances have to be corrected in order for that knee cartilage problem to go away for the long term. But that’s another video you can check out our other videos to see that on our YouTube channel or on our blog as well.

Here’s the next thing that works strengthening your butt muscles. Oftentimes, this is challenging for people to do on their own. At home, they just can’t quite get the right exercise or can do in a way that doesn’t aggravate the knee. Once it’s figured out once we can get the butt muscles tired consistently in an exercise. That is huge. That is gold for knee problems. Strengthening butt muscles is almost always going to be an excellent thing to do if somebody is suffering from a knee cartilage issue.

Now what doesn’t work is strengthening the quad muscles. One of the common exercises that people go do whenever they’ve got a knee cartilage problem is knee extension exercises. The most common way people do this because there’s all kinds of ways is they’ll go to the gym and they’ll get on the machine where you sit down. And it’s got a visually a cylinder-shaped pad that you tuck your feet behind. And then you it’s got the stack of weights and you choose your weight, you put the pin in the weights, and then you straighten out your knees and bend them. And every time you straighten out your knees, you’re pushing against the resistance and lifting up the weights.

That is probably the worst exercise that you can do for a knee cartilage problem. And the thing is, it’s deceiving because at first glance, it kind of makes sense to strengthen the quad muscles if you’ve got a knee cartilage problem, because it’s the muscles that are closest to the knee problem. And it might actually kind of feel good after a while do the exercise. But that’s just the body’s way of forcing yourself to get through it.

At the end of the day, if you’ve got quad muscles, the muscles in the front of the thigh above the knee joint that are too strong, it’s going to end up putting extra pressure through the knee joint. And that is not a good thing for the long term, you’re going to make that knee cartilage problem worse, you’re just you’re just on the expressway to having some more damaging the problem happened down the line, you’re going to need a surgery of some sort, you’re going to further damage the cartilage. So you want to stop doing any sort of isolated knee extension exercises, that doesn’t work. Something else that does work is stretching your quads and your hamstrings. There’s different ways to do this. And it’s got to be gentle.

The proper way to stretch quads and hamstrings because it’s often done incorrectly, is to stay low intensity with the stretch. If I gave you a scale zero to 10, zero, meaning nothing at all, you feel zero stretch at all and 10, meaning you’re about to tear something because you’re stretching so hard, you really want to stay on the lower end of the scale, you want to stay like a two or three stretching intensity, you don’t want to stretch really, really intense.

That low level stretch is really what allows those muscles to relax and calm down so that it’s putting less pressure to the knee joints and saving your knee cartilage rather than further injuring it. And what doesn’t work is stretching the glutes muscles, which I often hear patients doing. But do a like a figure four type stretch with across their knee over their other leg or across her ankle over their other knee and then push pull their legs towards them and it stretches the butt area, you generally don’t want to stretch muscles that need to get stronger.

As I’ve said already, you need to get stronger, but muscles, that’s going to help at any problem that works. So if you’re stretching a muscle that should technically be getting stronger, it’s kind of working against itself in that aspect. So stretching out the buttock muscles, although it might feel good, it might feel relieving to stretch and some people really like the sensation of a stretch.

It’s not a good thing to be doing in the long term. Especially if it’s the thing that you go to the most you want to stop stretching your glutes, start strengthening them, stop stretching your quads, start stretching those for sure. Here’s the last two things that work and don’t work.

What works for sure is gradual exercise for your knee. You want to keep moving, you want to make sure that you’re doing something that helps out your knee problem, something active, it helps set your knee problem doesn’t have to be the most active ever doesn’t have to be intense. You don’t have to sweat. You don’t have to grit through pain.

In fact, what doesn’t work is completely resting it like staying off of it completely and reducing your exercise activity to nothing. And or the other extreme that doesn’t work is pushing through pain and walking faster, harder running, it’s only going to get worse over time. You don’t want to push through pain with cartilage problems. And with cartilage problems, the pain might be sneaky, sometimes it might not hurt them in there when you’re doing the exercise or even immediately afterwards.

It might happen later in the day, like the evening after you work out or even the next day or at night in my wake you up. If that’s what you’re experiencing, then you need to adjust your exercise so that it’s something that feels good while you’re doing it and allows you to feel good afterwards and even in the next days afterwards, you should be able to find some exercises that just don’t aggravate it at all.

It’s rare. It does happen but it’s rare that the no pain no gain situation applies to rehabilitating to fixing a knee cartilage problem. Usually it should feel like you got warmed up. Maybe started to sweat if you’re feeling better and can tolerate it. But generally, your knees should feel better and better and better as you go along through the right exercise series, so you can heal a knee cartilage problem.

Just a quick side note here, let’s talk supplements. I’m not going to say this works or doesn’t work, by the way, but I know you might be thinking about that already, because you’re taking a supplement of the two most common ones are glucosamine and chondroitin. They’re joint supplements. And there’s tons of research on this stuff. And there’s tons of confusion about it as well.

We don’t have very clear understanding on the research, there’s research articles out there that show that it does help taking glucosamine and chondroitin with knee problems. And then there’s other research that shows that it doesn’t help. What we know is that it’s generally safe, as long as you don’t have any sort of reaction and the allergy to it the first time you take it, or anytime throughout, you should be safe to take it.

Now some people report they feel better, cool. If that’s you, then great, you shouldn’t have a problem continuing to take glucosamine and chondroitin. Now, if you’re the type though, that you took it and you didn’t feel any difference. It’s up to you if you want to continue, like I said, it’s not really going to hurt you. But you have to question if it’s really helping you at all. And if it’s something that you want to continue doing for the long term, to help out your knee cartilage problem. So that was a toss-up, I can’t tell you that it works for sure that it doesn’t. What I hoped to do today for you is just tell you the truth about it so that you can make the best decision for yourself.

So there you go, guys, that’s what works and what doesn’t work for any problem. Now, if you’re looking for expert help with your knee issue, and you’re thinking about wanting to hire us to help you out so that your knee cartilage can get healthy, and you can avoid surgery, injections and medications, and get back to being healthy, active and be mobile, then here’s what I recommend you do.

Go to the top of our website here and find the cost and availability button. Click that after you go there, the page will come up where you can leave us your details. One of my staff will call you back as soon as possible. Want to hear all about your knee problems so that we can make sure it’s the type of problem that we can help out here in the clinic. We don’t want to waste your time if it’s not.

Another option is just to call us directly at 915-503-1314 so that we can begin the conversation with you about your knee problem. And if it’s the type that we can help out, we’ll let you know what the next steps are so that you can get treatment for your knee issue. Thanks so much and I hope that we can be a part of your new recovery really soon. Have a wonderful day. Bye bye