Have you ever had an aching knee? It tends to lose strength and motion and can swell. A knee can get hurt suddenly through trauma or over a long period of time via joint overuse and illness. Once you notice that your knee is swollen and painful, act right away by going to a knee pain doctor near me. Sometimes seeing a doctor is not enough. You should as well learn to perform certain exercises that can reduce joint pain and stiffness and boost knee strength.
Simple ways to reduce pain
While getting knee pain treatment near me is important, there are simple methods of tackling your pain at home. One thing you can do to reduce pain and swelling is taking a rest from strenuous activities. This can allow your knees to heal. For instance, start to walk a shorter distance and to avoid activities that need you to stand for several hours. If possible, use a crutch or a cane when walking to reduce the amount of pressure placed on your knees. As you do this, ensure that you hold a cane or crutch on the opposite side of your hurting knee. As well as this, buy shoes that will support your feet more, especially, when you are standing or taking a walk.
While at home, make use of a cold ice pack on your aching knee. Place a thin towel between your skin and the frozen ice pack to avoid developing a rash or a burning sensation. About fifteen to twenty minutes four times a day is enough treatment for a warm, painful and swollen knee joint. As well as cold packs, one can use warm compresses and cold compresses interchangeably. The warm one will loosen and relax your knee muscles while the cold one will reduce inflammation. The warm and cold packs shouldn’t be used together though, use each at separate times of your day. Moreover, lift your knee about the level of heart to reduce your pain and swelling; but, if the symptoms persist, call the best knee pain doctor near me online.
In addition to this, you can wrap your painful knee with a brace or wrap to decrease swelling and pain and to increase knee support. An elastic wrap tied loosely around from your calf to the area above your knee can be so helpful. If you can slide two fingers under your flexible wrap, it is properly tied. Once you have done all the above and the pain doesn’t lessen, seek another session of knee pain treatment near me.
Knee flexibility – Increasing your range of motion
If you are going to function near to normal, you want your knees and ankles to be adequately flexible. Stiff joints that don’t move smoothly are often swollen and have a poor blood circulation. But do you have to seek a knee pain doctor near me to eliminate joint stiffness and restore your range of motion? This is not a must, if you can do the right exercises at home. However, you might need your knee pain treatment near me doctor to recommend a suitable physical therapist who can help you with the knee exercises.
One of the exercises they will ask you to do while demonstrating it is that of bringing your toes and foot towards your chin and then pointing away your foot for ten to twenty times. This exercise should be repeated every hour. Another exercise entails heel slides where you get to a lying position first. Then, you bend your knees as far as possible, ensuring that you slide your heel towards your buttock. To simplify this exercise, you can place a towel roll at the back of your knee. Do ten to twenty repetitions at least 3 times each day while making sure that you alternate your lying position with a sitting position.
A third exercise that any knee pain treatment NYC physical therapist can recommend is that of straightening your knee. It is perfect for stiff knees; so, place a big towel roll under your ankle to enable your calf to elevate itself from the bed. Then, let your knee straighten out slowly and hold for two to ten minutes every 120minutes.
Strengthening your knees
Even without the assistance of your knee pain doctor near me, you can do some exercises to strengthen your aching knee. In fact, you can strengthen exercises as soon as you notice that your knee is hurting. You could begin with a set of quadriceps. Thus, sit down and place a small towel roll beneath your knee and straighten out your knee by making your thigh muscles tight. Next, press the rear of your knee into the towel and then hold this position for five to ten seconds. Do ten to twenty repetitions about three times a day. A short arc knee extension workout is so helpful as well when you need to strengthen your aching knee.
So, lie on your back with a towel roll underneath your knee. Tighten your thigh muscles and then lift your heel off the ground while ensuring that your knee is on a towel roll. Hold a straightened leg position for up to five seconds. Release and repeat the exercise until you finish twenty repetitions. Do it about three to four times each day. If after doing exercises you feel worse, let your knee pain treatment near me physical therapist or doctor know about it. They will find out why your symptoms are worsening with exercise or why you have started to experience new symptoms.
If the pain seems to radiate to new areas and if it is accompanied by numbness and tingling, your knee pain doctor near me should know right away. But even as you visit a reputable clinic, make sure that you do aerobic exercises on a regular basis. If you cannot walk or swim yet, then try to ride a stationery bike for five minutes in the beginning. Continue to increase your level of exercise until you can ride your bike for twenty minutes. The bike needs to be adjusted so that your aching knee is relatively bent at the bottom of the revolution of the bike’s peddle. If you feel comfortable, start riding daily to boost your knee recovery.
Knee pain treatment NYC doctor and chronic discomfort
Pain that can be managed by exercises and some pain killers is the acute one. When your pain becomes chronic, advanced treatment techniques are necessary. No chronic pain is normal and there is no need trying to live with it. Living with intense pain is an art that many Americans have mastered, according to the American Osteopathic Association. The AOA has found that one in two people consider pain as part of life and about forty-one percent think that pain is actually a typical part of aging. Any knee pain doctor near me would tell you to seek medical help for chronic pain instead of accepting to live with it.
Pain can incapacitate your life and cause terrible stress when it is intense. Note that pain does not choose who to make miserable; it can affect any person regardless of how old they are. Thus, aging does not make you a perfect victim for pain. If you change your mindset and seek knee pain treatment near me, there is a possibility that you could recover from it. If you are eighteen to thirty-four years old, you may be among the 65% of youths that the AOA found to be suffering from chronic pain for the past year. Another fact is that about one third of Americans would not take prescribed drugs for chronic pain management as they think that they could get addicted to them.
Instead, they decide that living with pain is better than managing it. Hence, if you have terrible knee pain, having it diagnosed and treated by the best knee pain doctor near me. Surprisingly, you could find out that the cause of your knee pain is excess weight and the truth is that is gained weight can be lost. So, don’t worry excessively thinking that you have an arthritic condition of the knee.
Total knee replacement – When your knee pain treatment NYC doctor must do it
Total knee replacement surgery or knee arthroplasty is recommended only when a knee is totally damaged by a disease like arthritis or a bad injury. A knee that has succumbed to so much damage can hurt so badly when you are climbing a staircase or when walking. You can even experience some pain when you are resting in a sitting or lying position. A knee pain treatment near me specialist can use medicines and walking devices such as crutches to try and manage your pain without surgery.
If everything fails, your knee pain doctor near me will recommend knee surgery. A knee joint replacement surgery is effective and safe and is a good way to alleviate pain, eliminate leg deformity and enable one to resume their normal activities. First done in 1968, total knee replacement has evolved a lot over the years. There are new surgical materials and techniques that have made this type of surgery more reliable and effective these days. In the field of medicine, total knee replacement surgeries are the most successful. In the USA alone, doctors perform up to 600,000 knee replacement surgeries per year.
What does the total knee replacement surgery remove?
When a knee becomes severely damaged, it is a sign that its structures can no longer work together to ensure that the joint performs optimally. As well as this, severe damage to the knee joint is a sign that advanced knee pain treatment near me methods should be utilized. As the knee joint is the biggest in our bodies, it needs to be in the best health status to support the abuse we put it through every single day. Your knee has three main components: femur (thigh bone) patella (kneecap) and tibia (shinbone). The particular cartilage covers the meeting point of these three components and it is a soft substance that keeps the bones safe and promotes easy movement.
There are also C-shaped wedges (menisci) that are situated between two bones: tibia and femur. Their work is to pad your knee joint. There are large ligaments that hold your tibia and femur in place and this boosts your knee stability. As well, you have thigh muscles that strengthen your knees. The remaining areas of your knees are protected by a cover of a thin lining—synovial membrane. This membrane releases a type of fluid that lubricates your cartilage to reduce friction. In a healthy knee, friction can be reduced to nil, ensuring that pain that is related to joint degradation is reduced. There two things that can damage a healthy knee’s components. These are disease and injury. If you suffer from any of these, have a knee pain treatment near me medical expert trace its root source. If it is extreme damage to your knee due to an injury or a disease, then the total knee replacement surgery is the best solution.
Diseases that could cause a knee pain doctor near me refer you for surgery
The top disease that any knee pain doctor near me will search for when you go to clinic is arthritis. As arthritis is an umbrella term representing plenty of diseases, it’s good to know the specific kinds that affect your knee. These are osteoarthritis, post-traumatic arthritis and rheumatoid arthritis. Osteoarthritis is the wear and tear of joints and it is mostly related to old age. Mostly, men and women who are older than fifty years suffer from osteoarthritis. It happens when the cartilage that pads the bones of the knee joint begins to soften and deteriorate.
And as a result, pain is felt when bones touch or rub against each other. Osteoarthritis also causes joint stiffness, explaining why seeing a knee pain doctor near me now can help increase your knee joint range of motion. Rheumatoid arthritis is a disease where the synovial membrane becomes thickened and inflamed. As a result of chronic inflammation, the cartilage could deteriorate until a lot of it disappears. The outcomes are pain and stiffness. Rheumatoid arthritis is also referred to as inflammatory arthritis.
Finally, post traumatic arthritis happens after a serious knee injury where fractured bones around the knee may eventually damage the articular cartilage. Tears of your knee ligaments can also destroy your articular cartilage overtime. If you have any of the above-mentioned diseases, a competent knee pain doctor near me will refer you for a knee replacement surgery.
The surgical process
During knee arthroplasty surgery, a knee pain treatment near me doctor will refer you for surgery. Surgeon will prepare your bone by removing all the damaged surfaces of the cartilage found at the edges of your tibia and femur. As well as this, they will remove a tiny amount of an underlying bone. Next, your knee pain treatment near me surgeon will place metal implants where the removed materials once occupied. These can be cemented into the bone to ensure that they perform the same role as the removed parts of your knee.
Third, the knee pain doctor near me surgeon will resurface your patella by cutting the under surface and refashioning it with a plastic button. But, the resurfacing part may be left out if not deemed necessary. Finally, a spacer will be inserted between the metal prosthetics to make a smooth sliding surface. To know if you have a severe knee injury or disease that needs arthroplasty surgery, get to a knee pain treatment near me clinic as soon as you can.