Knee pain is absolutely something that you should take seriously, and this means examining all possible ways of treating the injury. This includes both “all natural” and more traditional types of treatment within the medical field. Herbs, dietary supplements, exercises and just about everything else that you can think of have been prescribed before. Anything that could potentially help you relieve pain is worth checking out.
Standard RICE Approaches
Like with any injury where pain may be resulting from inflammation, it’s wise to go with the standard approach that’s encoded in the acronym “RICE.” This stands for “Rest,” “Ice” “Compression,” and “Elevate.”
When it comes to knee pain in specific, this means that you should rest your knee or knees and put a brace on it to make sure that the area remains protected. Then, you can apply ice packs. The right amount of ice packs for knees should be up to 20 minutes for as many times per day as you need. Generally, this will be around three. A corollary to this is using heat packs after 2 or 3 days from the time the pain started.
You can also go back and forth between hot packs and cold packs, depending on how your knee pain responds. Then, you can wrap it up which is the compression part. This will help healing but it should also cut down on pain depending on the situation since it will prevent you from moving it, which can not only damage it but cause further pain. Elevation for the knee can also help to heal and relieve knee pain as well.
Medications
Any kind of anti-inflammatory medication can be effective when it comes to helping out with knee pain. This is because of the fact that knee pain often occurs due to inflammation in the first place. Examples include anything with the active ingredient in Tylenol, for example. The key is to use Acetaminophen.
You can also use Aspirin or something else that has an anti-inflammatory effect without using steroids. Ibuprofen or Naproxen or anything that uses NSAIDs can have a strong positive effect as well. It’s worth looking around to experiment.
Diet Supplements
There are a few supplements that can work to help with knee pain. This includes willow bark, for example. It helps to control inflammation. This all goes back to a study from 2001 that indicates that willow bark extract can help those with knee pain, such as in the case of those who have osteoarthritis.
You can try glucosamine as well if you want, there’s some evidence to indicate that this substance can help with joint pain, especially if you combine it with chondroitin sulfate, and especially for osteoarthritis.
Another option is ginger extract. You can get it in tea or root form. You can also just eat it straight up if you want. The research shows that it can have a serious effect on reducing knee pain over the long run.
Stress Reduction
One of the keys to reducing stress is to make sure that you put less pressure and stress on your sore knee. You can do this with either crutches or with a cane, for example. If you knee is bad enough, you can often reduce the pain by just staying off of it entirely, or by using a wheelchair, for example.
In addition, you can help with pain by increasing blood flow into the region by rubbing and massaging it, either by yourself or with help from a friend or even a professional. Obviously, if this starts causing pain, you should cease doing it immediately.
Avoid Over Rest
While it’s important to make sure you avoid anything that exacerbates the pain in your knees, it’s important to not even overdo this either. It’s especially the case with joint pain that never doing anything with it at all can cause the muscles around the joint to become weak which may make the pain even greater.
This is exactly why it’s important to keep doing exercises, provided that you have the approval of your doctor, and provided that you stop as soon as the pain appears to be getting worse when you do that exercise. You need to keep the area limber and strong, not make the joint pain worse by disturbing the muscles and ligaments.
Exercises Can Help
Exercises that can help with knee pain that you’re dealing with over the long-term especially, include flexibility training through stretches and weight training. Obviously, it’s important to do both of these things only with the aid of a doctor. You can keep the knee active through low impact training such as swimming or swimming aerobics. Stationary cycling and elliptical machines may help with stiffness and pain as well.
Leg Raises
If you need information about specific exercises that can help with knee pain, an example would be straight leg raises. These are particularly useful for causes such as osteoarthritis from those who are long time sports players. You always need to do light warming up first, such as lightly using a bike. After this, what you want to do is lie on the floor flat, bend one knee, and place your foot flat on the floor, then you keep your other leg straight and raise it as high as the knee on your other leg. The recommendation is 5 times per set, but however few or many as you need is good. This will mostly start with strengthening your quadriceps when your knee is hurt.
Pillow Leg Support
Another thing you can do in order to help fix your knee pain is engage in exercises that will make your legs better able to support your knees. You do this by putting a pillow between your legs and then squeezing your knees together. If your knee pain is due to having weak leg muscles, then pressure could be building up too much in your knees when you stand up. By strengthening your legs, you’ll strengthen the structures that make up your knee, and the pain may reduce.
Step Ups
If you’re feeling a bit more confident about your knee pain but it’s still there, another thing you can do is something using a step or bench. Really, it can be anything that is flat and puts a change in the floor that you can step onto consistently and safely. Then, you step up onto the platform or stair, doing your best to keep your pelvis level. You bend your knee that’s on the step and lower your back foot to the floor. All you really need to do is touch your toe to the floor briefly, and then raise your foot back up again.
Generally, you’ll want to do this about ten times each before switching legs. This should help strengthen your knee to help prevent yourself from getting additional pain in the future especially.
Again, it’s important to do this cautiously and make sure that you do it with the approval of a doctor, as well as being ready to stop immediately if it’s hurting too much.
For more information about treating knee pain and other pain associated with sports or other conditions, please don’t hesitate to go ahead and contact us today.