The Top 5 At-Home Treatments For When Knees Hurt
Do your knees hurt? Are you stuck at home suffering because of this knee problem? Do you get sudden sharp pain in your knees when you move them a certain way? Or do you get more of a dull achiness that comes on the more you use them. Worse yet, are you getting swelling and stiffness that comes on in the morning, or if you have been sitting for a long time?
I’m going to cover with you today, the top five at home treatments for when your knees hurt, at home treatment.
Number One, Rest
Rest can be done in all kinds of different ways. But I’m going to go through with you, how I guide my patients on the proper way to rest, so that you can go as fast as possible and getting some relief for a knee pain problem.
When your knees hurt, you typically, reflexively want to just get off your feet and rest your knees and that’s good. It will bring down the inflammation. It will keep it from getting more irritated, because chances are what you have been doing has been irritating your knees. It’s a good thing overall to rest.
The problem is when rest is taken too far. What we often see with clients, whenever they come in with a knee problem is, of course, they tell us their knees hurt them or acting up, so they have taken a week or two or more off their legs. They haven’t been doing much, they have avoided doing chores at home, exercising, spending time with family, in some instances going on trips or vacations. It’s really disrupting their life. But the tradeoff is that their knees are feeling better after they have rested.
They then think that they are healing it. The problem is that cartilage, ligaments, the tissues inside the knee joints that control the knee, they all need some activity. Really, if you are off your feet for a while, you begin to lose important muscle that can help to stabilize and control your knee as it gets better. The cartilage and ligaments themselves are influenced by how much pressure you put through them.
The proper way to go through this, so that you make sure it gets better as fast as possible, is by doing what I call relative rest. Meaning you still get up and move around, you take care of your house, you still have to go to the bathroom, go eat food, go to your kitchen or go out to grab food. And I want you to do those things, but plan on getting off your feet as soon as you are hitting your tolerance level.
What I mean by that is, once you have been up on your feet for 10-20 minutes or more, whenever your knees start to hurt a bit, that’s when it’s time where you should plan on sitting down and taking 5-10 minutes or more, whatever time it needs for your knees to calm down before you resume activity. Find that threshold for yourself.
If you are with family, if you have kids or grandkids, find out where you can sit. Plan and tell them that you are going to have to take a break every now and then. And if you spend a few days, maybe even a couple of weeks doing that, you can usually get a good handle on your knee problem. That way you are not having to take a forced break all the time and having to take pain medication, injections and seeing the doctor sooner than you planned on seeing.
Treatment Number Two Using A Brace
Many of our clients come in using a brace already. I see people doing this all the time. And I always have to ask them “How did you get this brace? Did you go by it on your own? Did you already have it from another knee injury? Did you get it from a friend? Or was it given to you by a medical professional?”
The reason why I ask these questions, is because the advice that comes with the brace, either what they found on the internet, what was on the box where they bought the brace from, or whatever they were told by a professional or friend. People rarely ever understand that knee braces are only temporary. It should not be used for the long term. Knee braces won’t fix any problem for the long term.
There are a few circumstances where a knee brace is needed a little bit longer than others. Especially with a ligament problem like an ACL injury, MCL, LCL, PCL injury, all those are the ligaments in the knee, but other types of injuries in the knee, they are not 100% needed, unless you have had surgery. They are not 100% needed.
They can benefit by giving you some perceived stability, which will allow you to be up on your feet a bit longer. There are a few rare circumstances where having a really tight bracket and knee brace will benefit. But in the long term, knee braces are not good because they teach the muscles around the knee to not work the same. And that’s not good for a knee joint.
There needs to be some plan in place to eventually get off the knee brace, so that the knee can get all the way better without having to rely on it for the long term. And most people like that news because wearing a knee brace is not comfortable always. They get sweaty. They get smelly, especially in the summer months. And it’s not fashionable if you are trying to wear shorts or a skirt or dress or something.
Having a good plan to get off the knee brace is going to be the best thing for you. But in the short term, slap that knee brace on and see if you can get by without taking pain medications or having to go visit your doctor as fast as you thought you might.
Treatment Number Three, Exercise
There are all kinds of knee exercises out there, and exercises for the foot, hip and back, to which greatly influence the knee. Having a specific exercise plan is a very beneficial thing for when your knee hurts. I always have to ask the question is what happened. And if you had an accident, if you fell or somebody fell into your knee, it’s obvious how your knee got hurt. But if you didn’t have an accident, a specific recent accident when the knee pain flared up, then there’s something wrong with the way your muscles are pulling on your knees, it could be a cartilage issue, the way that you are moving.
There is some issue that you obviously aren’t aware of at this point, otherwise you would fix it. That is feeding into the knee problem and discovering that issue may take some expert help. Someone like a specialist physical therapist may be able to help you out with that. There are also lots of exercises on the internet, you have got to find out what kind of problem you have, and which exercises will benefit your knee the most.
A quick rule of thumb is, if you do an exercise that’s supposed to help your knee problem and your knee feels worse right away, or right after the exercise, it is not a good thing. And not even though it hurt such as the good sensation. Avoid that! Most exercises that work out your but, quad muscles, and muscles that are right above the knee, on the front of the thigh are going to be harmful for any problem.
It’s kind of counterintuitive, you would think that those muscles need to be strengthened. And sometimes they are shut down and not working right. It doesn’t mean that they need to be strengthened. They need to be more so coordinated, which is a different process in strengthening. But you have to be careful with which knee exercises you choose.
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Back to the exercises. Pay attention to how your knee is behaving, if you are doing some of the exercises. And if you are just having trouble with it, get to an expert, get some specialist help so that you don’t make your knee problem worse and you don’t keep it there longer than it needs to be. Otherwise you can end up with some serious problems. If too much time goes by.
Treatment Number Four, Stretches
Stretches generally are pretty safe for the knee, and they can provide some quick short-term relief. There is a simple one like bringing your foot to your bottom and stretching out the front of your thigh. There is one way you reach your foot. There are all kinds of stretches out there. It won’t be hard if you google “types of stretches”.
You generally want to stretch what feels tight. Where I want to caution you on this is how you use stretching matters. And depending on what video you find, or what information you find online about stretches, or friends or family or even healthcare professionals that tell you to stretch, here is some guidance that I would apply to at all.
Don’t stretch too hard! On a scale of 0 to 10. Zero, meaning you feel nothing at all and ten, meaning you are about to tear, whatever it is you are stretching, I would hang out, no more than a three. And the reason for that this is going to be a little scientific. There are little cells inside our tendons and muscles, tendons and muscles are what you stretch whenever you get a stretch sensation.
When you overstretch those little cells, the nerve endings that connect to your brain and the muscle. They create something called the stretch reflex. You can Google that. The stretch reflex is a protective mechanism built into tendons and muscles, that is designed to protect the muscle and tendon from getting overstretched or tearing So what happens is if you stretch beyond a certain amount, that muscle starts to contract in order to protect itself in the tendon. And it won’t let you get that good of a stretch.
You are better off doing a light, or a mild stretch and holding it for a longer period of time. Usually 30 seconds to a minute or more is plenty. More than a couple of minutes and you get diminishing returns. In other words, it’s not that much more beneficial. But doing that kind of stretch is truly the best way to stretch.
If you try that out, and you are like that’s too light, it feels like nothing, and you are looking for that intense stretch. That intensity that you feel during the stretch might actually be that you get the stretch reflex score in the muscle contracts, and you might actually be stretching out your tendons. If you feel a big, huge enormous stretch and it feels through the entire length of the muscle, especially at the ends of the muscle where the tendon is, you might actually be stretching out your tendons which is bad.
Tendons can’t really shorten very easily, they are not muscle. The muscles can contract and lengthen, but tendons just remain the same length. If you accidentally overstretch your tendons, you are creating a worse problem very likely. So watch out with stretching, don’t do it too intensely.
Treatment Number Five, Supplements And Dietary Changes
Anti-inflammatory foods and anti-inflammatory supplements are a real thing. If your diet is not the greatest, or you haven’t really ever explored taking supplements, I highly suggest you do some research and find out what might work for you.
In my experience, and I’m not a nutritionist or a physician, I’m a physical therapist, so this isn’t my specialty at all. I’m going to just put that out front. What I’ve seen from patients is, there are different body types, different genetics. Everybody responds differently to different supplements and diets. Some people can try the anti-inflammatory supplements and diets, and have a really good outcome, their joints feel better, their knees feel better, their knees tend to stop hurting.
There are still some mechanical problems that I help them with, that allow them to avoid having a worse problem later on down the road. But in the short term, they can get control over their knee problem without taking pain medications or having to rely on injections, and worse yet avoiding a surgery.
But there are some people out there genetically that just don’t respond to dietary and supplement changes. So they will tell me “I tried this diet, and I tried this supplement, and my doctor even told me to take this and it had zero effect”. Of course, I can’t speak to why that is exactly, or what’s better or worse as far as supplements or diets. It’s not my specialty. But what I will encourage you to do is to research and learn. Because maybe there is a good chance that there is something simple that you can do throughout your day, as far as taking a supplement, or changing the way you eat slightly can make a huge difference on your short-term knee problem.
Those are the five treatments that you do at home for when your knees hurt. If you are tired of your knee hurting and you are looking to get some professional help for your knee problem, I encourage you to hit the cost and availability button up at the top, or below, and let us know a bit more about your knee problem.
My staff will get back to you as soon as we can and discuss with you about your knee problem, to see if it’s a type of problem that we can make a big difference on and see if you have a great shot at avoiding surgery and medications and injections. I hope that we can be a part of your success story real soon. Have a great day.
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