Oh, hey… Hey there.

How’s it going?

This is Dr. David of El Paso Manual Physical Therapy.

And we just got a new shipment of knee braces in.

We’ve been selling them a lot to people coming in asking questions about knee pain.

It’s really interesting about knee braces, so many people buy them, and we have clients that come in wearing their knee brace.

And we find out that they actually don’t really even need it in some cases.

And then there’s other cases where we get clients that come in or people just asking questions, that are asking, “Should I do a knee brace?”

And we tell them, “Yes. Please get one of these now, because you should have been wearing one months ago. You would have been out of pain by now.”

But let me just talk to you about what we have here.

There isn’t anything special about the brand. It’s just about the kind of support that you get.

For the most part, all knee brace brands are, you pay for what you get.

But the one that we have here, this one has some metal brackets on the sides.

You can’t see that, but it doesn’t bend very good here because there’s metal under the cloth.

And it’s got hinges on each side so the brace bends with your knee.

And it’s got a little cutout for your kneecap and some straps.

And the reason why we give these to people whenever they need it is because they have some sort of ligament problem, like an ACL, MCL, PCL, those are terms that you hear thrown out sometimes.

Those are referring to certain ligaments that are inside of the knee. And just to give you an idea of what a ligament does, it connects a bone to a bone.

So in the case of the knee, it’s connected the thigh bone to the shin bone, and if you have a problem with one of those ligaments, maybe it’s not torn, but it’s a little loose, it’s stretched out some, it can heal, but you gotta make sure that you’re not continuously overstretching it.

And so using something like a brace to give it some stability so it’s not continuously overstretching that ligament, it allows that ligament to heal.

A tell-tale sign that you’ve got some loose ligaments in your knee is if you get repeated clicking or popping.

Like every step you take … maybe not every step, but pretty frequently, like maybe every two or three steps you get a little click or a shift or a pop, that can definitely be, that’s a high probability that you have a ligament problem, and you probably need something like this to give you some support.

And it needs to be something that’s got some metal brackets in it. If you just get the sleeve, the one that doesn’t have any metal brackets in it, it’s usually not enough support.

And you might feel a little bit of relief, but it’s not going to truly give you enough support to be able to allow the ligament to heal longterm.

Now, let’s say you DON’T have a ligament problem, and you’re thinking of using a knee brace.

99% of the time, it’s not a big deal.

It’s not going to hurt you.

It’s just that you don’t necessarily need it.

It’s not going to speed up the healing process.

It’s not a critical part of the recovery like it is if you have a ligament problem and you need one of these.

So it’s a big relief whenever we get clients that come in wearing a brace, and we tell them, “Hey, you actually don’t need the brace.

You need to be doing this instead or that instead, and you can put this away for now.”

They’re relieved, especially if it’s hot.

If it’s summertime, the braces don’t feel very good under your clothes most of the time.

They’re sweaty.

They smell if you’ve been wearing them for a while.

You’ve got to wash this on a regular basis.

And a common thing, this is real important.

A lot of people don’t get this.

There is no such thing as a comfortable brace.

They’re all not that comfortable.

But when you need it, you need it, and you gotta deal with the discomfort.

It’s going to rub you wrong.

It’s going to maybe give you a little bit of a rash from time to times, like a heat rash type thing.

It’s going to slide down.

You’re going to constantly be feeling like you need to pull it up.

And that’s okay. That’s just part of the process.

But here’s what’s important to note about using the brace.

There has to be an end goal, like a reason for you to stop using the brace.

You don’t want to get caught in a situation where you’re using a brace indefinitely.

You just wear it because you think that’s what you need, and there’s no end in sight.

When we give people these braces, and we tell them, “You need to be wearing this because you have some problem that requires this,” we give them an endpoint.

We say, “You’re going to need this for three months. You’re going to need this for six months,” or whatever it is, depending on their case.

It’s never, “Hey, wear this the rest of your life or whenever you go walk for the rest of your life.”

There needs to be an endpoint, because the way you need to think of this is as a crutch.

Like let’s say you sprain your ankle, you roll your ankle and you can’t step on your foot very well, because your ankle hurts, you might get on crutches for a few days, maybe a week or two if it’s real bad.

But once the ligament in your ankle heals that you rolled, then you can start putting pressure on it again, and you don’t need the crutches anymore.

It’s a similar thing with this.

Once the ligaments in your knees heal, then you can get rid of this, and you can start putting weight in your leg again.

And we might need to take care of some muscle imbalances too, like you might need to get stronger in certain muscles.

We take care of that along the way.

Then you don’t need the brace anymore, and you actually need to get back in your usual activities without this.

And that might even include, for some people, we have clients that are weightlifters, or they’re lifting very heavy weight, or they’re runners and they’re jogging for marathon distances or beyond.

We’ve seen some ultra marathon runners as well that are worried about whether or not they should be using a knee brace.

So I hope this helps. If you find yourself using a knee brace right now and you’re confused about it, please reach out to us.

We love to answer those questions. If you think you might need a knee brace and you’re confused about which one to get at the store, because there’s so many.

There’s all kinds of different ones, with brackets, without brackets.

There’s different types of brackets, the metal frames inside, we can clear all that up for you pretty good.

So let us know. We’re here to help.

Bye. Have a great day.