Knees Archive

Improving balance, losing weight, and strengthening muscles help prevent injury and reduce pain.

Tendons are the bands of fibrous tissue that attach muscle to bone. Tendinitis — tendon inflammation — is often a repetitive strain injury. You get it by repeating the same motion over and over, which irritates the tendon. Joints commonly affected by tendinitis include the elbow, heel, and wrist.

Weekend warriors (folks who engage in high-intensity activities such as running or basketball on the weekend but do little to maintain conditioning during the week) often develop tendinitis in the knees. Simply being overweight can also contribute to knee tendinitis. Age is another risk factor. Over time, tendons become less flexible and the involved muscles lose strength, both of which further stress the tendons. Inflexible hamstring and quadricep muscles make you more susceptible as well.

An ailing knee or a hip can make life miserable. Even if your doctor recommends it be replaced, you need to carefully weigh the risks and benefits before agreeing to this major surgery and understand that it will require significant rehabilitation to get back on your feet.

The most important factor in choosing to have a knee or hip replaced is how much it hurts and how much it is affecting your life. Here are six signals that it's time to have a knee or hip replaced:

Medical professionals are an important part of managing arthritis. For example, your doctor can make sure you're taking the right medications, and physical or occupational therapists can help you find safe and effective ways to exercise and modify your daily activities. But ultimately, the day-to-day work of managing your arthritis falls to you.

One way you can be active in managing your arthritis is by adapting your daily routine to relieve pressure on your joints. The following techniques can help you avoid stiffness and lighten the burden on your joints.

If you have knee arthritis, the wearing away of cartilage at the joint, you may think that only long-term, intensive therapy will keep you walking. But simply increasing light activity may be all it takes to keep you from being sidelined. A study published in BMJ April 29, 2014, found that more time doing light-intensity physical activity—such as pushing a vacuum cleaner, walking around a room, or strolling through a grocery store—protects against knee arthritis becoming worse and against developing a disability as you age. How much more activity does it take? People who spent four hours a day doing light activity had 30% less risk of disability compared with people who spent three hours a day doing the same activities. Even among people who did almost no moderate activity, the more light activity they did, the less likely they were to develop disability. "That means that almost any activity you do that is not just sitting will keep you mobile and independent longer, able to walk around the house or go grocery shopping. The more you do each day, the better your knees will support you," says geriatrician Dr. Suzanne Salamon, an instructor at Harvard Medical School.

Try these "anytime" exercises to help protect your mobility and independence.

Strong knees are crucial to daily activities like getting out of a chair or walking to the kitchen or bathroom. But thinking about taking on special exercises to strengthen your knees can seem daunting. "Older adults are often worried that doing any leg-strengthening or weight-bearing exercises will increase the 'wear and tear' on their knees and increase already present arthritis. But doing strengthening exercises around the knee joint actually helps lessen the progression of any arthritis," says Ashley Wiater, a physical therapist at Harvard-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital. Strengthening hip muscles helps to stabilize the knees as well.

Hip and knee pain can keep you from the activities you love, as well as make routine tasks difficult. But there are many ways to get you moving again pain-free, without surgery. Here are some of the treatments that can help relieve hip and knee pain.

Ultrasound, phonophoresis, and iontophoresis

Therapeutic ultrasound is a simple procedure that uses sound waves to increase blood flow, relax muscle spasms, and aid healing that leads to faster hip pain relief and knee pain relief. The therapist applies gel to your skin and moves an ultrasound wand over your skin around the painful area. In a special ultrasound technique called phonophoresis, medication (often hydrocortisone) is added to the gel. In a survey of orthopedic physical therapists, more than half said they would use ultrasound and phonophoresis to reduce soft-tissue inflammation (in tendinitis or bursitis, for example). These techniques are also used to manage pain, heal tissue, and help muscles stretch.

If you're overweight or obese, a combination of diet and exercise can help you lose more weight and reduce your knee pain better than either intervention alone. Being overweight can strain the knee joints, contributing to or worsening knee osteoarthritis. Researchers at Wake Forest University tested the effects of diet, exercise, or a combination of both on knee pain and function. They randomly assigned 454 overweight and obese adults (ages 55 and older) with knee osteoarthritis to one of three interventions—diet and exercise, diet only, or exercise only—and followed them for 18 months. People in the study who both dieted and exercised lost the most weight—11.4% of their body weight, compared with 9.5% for the diet group and 2% for the exercise group. They also had less knee pain, better function, and faster walking speed, according to the study, which was published in the Sept. 25, 2013, issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.

Research finds little, if any, benefit to these shoe inserts.

Nearly a third of us will develop osteoarthritis of the knee by our 60s. With no cure for this painful joint condition on the horizon, relief often has to come from pain pills, exercises, and physical therapy—or eventually, a joint replacement.

How to work out safely so you get all the health benefits without the aches and strains.

Whether you've been exercising for years or are just starting a fitness program, it's important to avoid injuries so you can keep moving closer to your fitness goals. We become more vulnerable to injuries as we get older, in part because we are less agile than we used to be, and we have also lost some of our former bone and muscle mass.