How to Prevent Knee Pain and Problems

 

Whether you’re suffering with knee pain right now or have experienced it in the past, you don’t need a specialist knee surgeon to tell you how important it is to maintain the good joint health in your knees. Whilst our team at My Knee Doc are highly trained to deal with any kind of problem, it’s always better to prevent knee problems occurring in the first place and to get the right advice and treatment as early as possible, allowing you to better manage your symptoms.

Below we’ve compiled our top tips to help keep knee pain and problems away. While these tips are helpful for almost everyone, if you’ve had serious knee problems in the past we advise you check in with your GP or specialist knee surgeon before performing any kind of exercises.

Keep Your Weight Under Control

We’ve put this at the top of our list, because ultimately, it’s our weight which impacts the knee joint the most in our day to day lives. Often also the cause of back and foot pain, carrying a bit of extra weight can heavily stress your knee joint and with time can damage the supporting cartilage within the joint.

If you feel that your weight might be negatively impacting your knees, our specialist knee surgeon Mr Gareth Stables, recommends increasing your weekly exercise and taking a look at your diet to reduce the stress on your knee joints.

Select Form-Fitting Shoes

While we all love wearing the latest Nike trainers, it’s important to keep in mind that everyone’s leg alignment and foot shape is different. These factors affect the weight distribution across the sole of the foot, influencing the stresses placed on the knee joint.

This is why our specialist knee surgeon Warrington always advises patients take a look at their shoe choice and how it affects weight distribution across the feet and leg alignment. Take some time to find which shoe brands are most comfortable for your feet and also help cushion the impact of every step you take. There are also some specialist insoles that we can recommend to help lessen the symptoms of knee arthritis.

Try Low Impact Forms of Exercise

Many specialist knee surgeons will recommend various exercises to strengthen the leg muscles and help relieve knee pain, however, it’s important to practice low impact forms of exercise to ensure you’re not further damaging your knee joint. If you want to exercise, try to use low-impact alternatives like the rowing and elliptical machines.

Swimming is also highly recommended for any cases of joint pain as it is a non-weight bearing form of exercise.

Walk More

To put things simply, our bodies were built to walk. Unfortunately, modern daily life requires us to be seated for prolonged periods of time, only exacerbating knee pains and problems. Walking is not only one of the best low-impact forms of exercise, but it has also been shown to be restorative in helping realign the body’s muscular imbalances and relieve aches and pains.

 

Arrange To Speak To A Specialist

If you have some questions and think it would be good to talk to someone from the My Knee Doc team first so you can be 100% sure that we can help you.

You can schedule a free 10-minute call and one of our specialists will answer all your questions, over the phone, completely free.