1. A Chronicle of Pain
Stop 10 people on the street and ask how their knees are feeling, and at least half will tell you they experience chronic pain. Ask the same question to a group of 10 athletes and you'll be lucky to find 2 people who don't have chronic pain. The sad truth is that a joint as critical, loaded and influenced by as many large muscles as the knee is going to come under some kind of pathological stress and strain at some point. What this means is that there are more causes of knee pain than you can count, making careful diagnosis and treatment essential.
2. Knee Treatment Cocktail
One of the first things that almost any sports trainer or physician will tell you to do to treat knee pain is stretch. The primary stretches are a hamstring stretch, either sitting on the ground or raising your foot up, a quadriceps stretch which requires you to pull your foot to your butt and a calf stretch, which you can do by posting one foot behind the other and pushing against a wall or pole. After physical activity, have a cocktail with ice, but keep the ice on your painful knee for 15 minutes at a time. Then try a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory (after checking with your doctor), such as ibuprofen, to add a little spice to your knee pain treatment cocktail.
3. Stop What You're Doing
Many runners or other athletes approach doctors and explain that they just can't figure it out since they run 50 miles a week but still have knee pain. The problem, unfortunately, might be that they're running 50 miles a week (or do whatever other kind of physical activity is causing inflammation or other problems in the knee). To figure out what might be causing your knee pain, stop each of your physical activities one at a time (while continuing the others) for the duration of 1 week. If you find that stopping none of the activities result in less knee pain, then think about things that you're not doing--such as stretching or leg workouts.
4. Just Walk Away
The most common physical activity that causes load and stress on the knee is simply walking. While you might think there's no right or wrong way to walk, in truth walking incorrectly can stress joints improperly and add woe to your weak knees. Make sure you walk in comfortable, supportive shoes. Try pulling your shoulder blades slightly together and keeping a small amount of tension in your abs. If you feel you just can't straighten your walk out, squeeze your glutes together as you walk to get a stride that takes stress off the knee with a correct walk.
5. A Healthy Knee for Eternity
Whether it's arthritis, a wobbly patella, a knee injury or one of the hundred other possible causes for chronic joint pain causing your knee to hurt, you need to think about your treatment as a lifelong project. If you complete one round of treatment and then, for instance, stop stretching or go back to doing three hundred pound squats, your knee problem will return faster than your bill from the knee doctor. So, whatever your treatment turns out to be, stick with it to maintain a healthy knee.
