According to “increasing prevalence of knee pain and symptomatic knee osteoarthritis”, there is approximately 25% of adults that have frequent knee pain that limits function, mobility and impairs the quality of life. But why and what causes knee pain? And how do we conquer that?
There are a lot of different causes for knee pain. Most commonly are sprained ligaments, meniscus tears, tendonitis, and runner’s knee. There are several more problems that can cause knee pain such as bursitis, a dislocated kneecap, IT band syndrome, osteoarthritis and tendonitis. Those are pretty much the causes for knee pain that we can’t really predict or control.
What I want to talk about is something that we can control - Our posture!
Poor posture is the number one cause of most joint pain. Posture is critical to the alignment of the joints in the body from your spine, to your shoulders, hips, knees and even feet.
To give you a couple of examples, any prolonged sitting with a forward head posture will protrude the shoulders forward and weaken the back muscles. This leads to shoulder impingement and even rotator cuff injuries.
A prolonged period of sitting with the knee bending can cause your muscles and tendons to stiffen, and this can cause discomfort and pain. Simply, when we are inactive for an extended period of time in our knee, we may experience knee pain.
How can we stop the knee pain?
There are few tricks I think it works quite effectively:
Stretch all muscles that function our knee daily, which includes quadriceps, hamstring, the outer thigh (hip abductors), the inner thigh (hip adductors), and the calf muscles.
Strengthening all muscles that function our knee
Ice it when you experience the knee pain
Heat pack when you experience stiffness on your knee