Knee Pain: cause and cure

So your knee is hurting, and you are wondering what you can do about it. Surgery? Physiotherapy? Or just grin and bear it? It is surprising just how many people have knee pain.

So what can you do?

Counterintuitively, the first pit stop should be exercise. Strengthen the areas around your knees. Thigh, calf, hip. Your knees need all the support they can get to take the load of your upper body.

Consider exercises like walking lunges. Make sure you do them with the correct posture.

Keeping your front knee over or just behind your toes and consciously lower your body. It will give you mobility, balance, and strength.

If you do not have the strength to do a full lunge, consider standing just in front of a wall.

Lean back and then squat against the wall so that your hip and knee can be at ninety degrees to the ground.

Try leg swings, which is freely swinging your leg when balanced on the other one. If you find it hard to balance, take the support of a chair or a wall.

Lift your back of your foot (heel) off the ground to exercise your calf muscles.

Collectively all these exercises will take away the pressure from your knee.

Sometimes, it can be neuroplastic pain.

This is pain that was not caused by an injury, poor posture or weak muscles.

Neuroplastic pain is pain experienced in your mind that may not actually exist. It is triggered by various factors. You were once injured. It healed but the trauma did not leave. You are stressed. You suffer from anxiety or have issues coping.

Note that neuroplastic pain is not real, but it feels so real that you would be annoyed if anyone told you otherwise.

In such cases, you may need pain processing therapy where you teach your brain to recognise that what you are feeling is perception not reality.

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