How To Treat Knee Arthritis Video

Knee arthritis can be very aggravating for runners and other athletes. Learn how to treat sports injuries in this video on health and rehab.

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Restore hamstring flexibility
Improve quad strength
Control swelling
Stretch calf muscle

About this Author

Russ Paine is a well-known physical therapist with the Roger Clemens Institute at Memorial Hospital. After getting his degree in physical therapy from Texas Women's University, he trained for several years under David Drez, MD, a renowned surgeon and sports medicine specialist. He has been a rehab consultant for the Houston Rockets, Houston Astros and NASA. He has given hundreds of presentations in his career in the US and abroad, and has published many chapters in text books and papers in peer review journals.

RUSS PAINE: Knee arthritis is probably one of the most debilitating injuries to a professional athlete, basketball players. Probably the number one reason that soccer players have to retire is because of knee arthritis. So it's not just for old people like me. It's for people that have some wear and tear in their joint. If you lose the meniscus in your knee, you may have a greater chance of increasing arthritis. So when you develop arthritis, you lose the protective covering over the end of your bone, the articular cartilage. And the articular cartilage has no blood supply and no nerve supply, so it doesn't heal. Once you lose the articular cartilage, it's gone. And so things you do to protect or preserve what you have left are unloading activities. Make sure we have good hamstring flexibility because if you walk around with a bent knee, because your knee is swollen and you got some pain, you will wear out your kneecap, okay? Because the hamstrings counteract the extensor mechanism of the knee, so swelling is really important. Restoring quad function is very, very important because your quadriceps acts as a shock absorber for your knee. So if you're walking around or doing activities playing golf with a weak quad and your knee swells and you've got some arthritis, you can improve that situation by improving your quad strength. Because again if this is not absorbing shock, all the load is transmitted to the joint and you have more irritation of the knee. So knee arthritis is a debilitating problem but it can be helped with quadriceps strengthening, restoring hamstring flexibility and controlling the swelling, and also stretching the calf muscle. And again, the most important thing with arthritis is modification of activities, especially in younger athletes. You know the hardest thing to do is to avoid those sports where you're causing a damage to the knee. So what you want to do is cycling, swimming and unloading activities for arthritis.

How to Treat Knee Arthritis Video

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