Frequent knee pain affects approximately 25% of the US population!
Throughout the day, your knees receive impact, allowing you to walk to places you want to go. These small stresses add up over time without appropriate care and recovery. Thankfully, there are ways to prevent knee discomfort all together! Including using knee pads when appropriate, limiting awkward stresses, massaging, stretching and strengthening regularly.
It’s important to understand some of the structures in your knees, to better understand how you can compromise them. The knee joint connects your femur (upper leg) to your tibia (lower leg) bone. Within the joint, you have multiple structures including your:
- Meniscus: the cushioning between your femur and tibia to prevent bone on bone grinding
- Medial Collateral Ligament (MCL): helps prevent the femur from gliding too far to the inside
- Lateral Collateral Ligament (LCL): helps prevent the femur from gliding too far to the outside
- Anterior Cruciate Ligament (ACL): helps prevent the femur from gliding too far forward
- Posterior Cruciate Ligament (PCL): helps prevent the femur from gliding too far backward
How do I Protect my Knees?
- Understand your Weight’s Impact: Every extra pound can add up to 3 lbs. of pressure to your knees! Some great non-weight bearing activities includes biking, using an elliptical, yoga, swimming, and more!
- Exercise and Improving your Balance: Increasing the muscle strength around your knee, can take additional stress off your joint, including reducing the risk of osteoarthritis. This includes quad, hamstring, adductor (inside of knee) and abductor (outside of knee) muscles, and your lower leg muscles, like your calves.
- Use Proper Body Mechanics: Improper mechanics increases strains to your knees. But what’s correct mechanics? For one, limiting how often your knee travels over your mid foot/toes. This goes for when your kneeling, squatting, etc. When squatting to lift, keep your knees tracking over your toes. Also, when kneeling, ALWAYS use knee pads! Repetitive contact pressure can cause painful conditions, like bursitis.
- Wear Better Shoes and Replace When Needed: Unsupportive, ill-fitted and old shoes can cause discomfort up your kinetic chain, since it distributes your weight disproportionately. If the shoe itself is in good health, it can make a huge difference in just replacing the insoles.