hey everybody it's Doctor Jo, and today I'm going to show you seven simple ways to
treat knee pain. so let's get started.
No, I haven't hurt my knee, but a lot of y'all have asked me in the past, should I use
hot, should I use cold, when should I use it?
so in general, I say before you get started, use hot to get everything
loosened up. so now that I've had my heat on for about ten to fifteen minutes,
maybe even 20, I'm gonna go get into my exercises. so the first one that you're
gonna do is if you have a little ankle weight, you're gonna take an ankle weight
and just wrap it around your ankle. if you don't have an ankle weight, that's
okay. you don't have to use the ankle weight. sometimes what the ankle weight
will do is just give you a little bit of what we would call traction on your leg.
so I'm just gonna kind of hold my leg up like this because this is a low chair,
but ideally you'd want to get in a chair that's high enough where you can just
relax your leg. and so with the weight, I'm just kind of relax, and I'm just
gonna kind of bounce my leg back and forth. maybe a little side to side, so
this is almost like the pendulums that you do for your shoulder. so you're
letting that weight just kind of open up that knee joint, and then you're getting
some movement in there to just really kind of loosen everything up. if you were
in the clinic with me, what I do is I'd have you sit on my table, I'd rise it up
and then I pull it or distract it a little bit and move it around. so this is
just a way that you can do this at home. so again if you have a higher chair,
that's probably better. this one's just a little bit lower. you can you know, I hang
it over the edge this way but I think if you just hold it like this so you can
wiggle it around a little bit you can. and then that just kind of helps loosen
everything up to get going. so the next treatment is just going to be a calf
stretch. so the calf comes up and crosses that knee joint, so when you have knee
pain, if your calf muscles are tight, it's gonna cause some knee pain in there. so
getting them nice and flexible should relieve some of that.
you can take just a regular belt. you can use a stretch strap if you have one, a
dollar store jump rope, anything like that.
take the loop and just put it about at the ball of your foot. you can put it
just a little bit lower if you don't have shoes on so it doesn't slip off. you
don't want to actively move your foot. you just want to be relaxed and then
you're gonna use the strap to pull your foot towards you to get that calf
stretch right in there. so you should feel it up underneath. you might feel it
in your knees especially if you're having knee pain. so you want it to be a
comfortable stretch. you don't want it to be painful. you don't want to be sitting
there going 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 because you want a full 30 second stretch. if you
aren't able to hold it for that 30 seconds. you're probably pulling too hard.
a lot of times I'll see people you know just cranking on it, but a stretch should
really be just tension maybe slightly uncomfortable, but definitely tolerable.
so 30 seconds then relax it, and do that 3 times. the next one is going to be a
hamstring stretch. so you can actually just keep the strap or the rope whatever
you have in the same spot, and then just lie down on the floor. if you can't get
on the floor that's ok, you can do these on your bed, you can do them on a couch,
you don't have to get down on the floor if you have a hard time getting up off
the floor. for the hamstring stretch, I always like to prop up the other side.
you don't have to but I feel like it takes a little bit of pressure off my
back. sometimes people say they feel a better hamstring stretch with them both
down, but I personally like it just to give you that little bit of tension
taken off of your back. so again with the stretch, you're using the strap to pull
up your leg. you're not actively lifting your leg. I think a lot of times people
want to kick it up, but you're really just nice and relaxed. try and keep your
knees straight. try not to bend your knee and you're just gonna pull it up until
you feel stretching those hamstrings because the hamstrings then cross the
other way on that knees. so they're all the way up here at the hip and they come
down they cross that knee joint. so again if they're tight, they might be causing
some of that knee pain. now see how you want to keep that knee straight.
I'm bending my knee cuz I want to come up higher. well then I'm not getting that
hamstring stretch anymore because I'm bending the knee and that crosses the
knee joint. so make sure that knee's straight. if you come up here and it
starts to bend, then bring it back down a little bit. if you want to get a
combination stretch, you can stretch your calves while you're doing it as well, but
I always like to isolate it out just so you can really feel what you're
stretching because then if your calves are really tight, then you might not be
feeling the hamstring stretch. so again this is 30 seconds. you want to do that
three times in a row and then come back down. each time just to kind of relax it
and let those muscles reset. so as I was talking about in the beginning with
using heat and cold. for heat, you want in general to do before you start doing
your exercise and stretches. and so the folks at Cureve natural therapies have
these really cool gel packs that are for hot and cold. and the reason I like that
and you can see in here is you take this out. and mines mines in the cold right
now to cool everything to ice it back down.
but you can also use it for hot. so you don't have to buy a whole lot of things.
so in general if I was having some knee pain, or if I just wanna stretch in
general I would do heat first for about 15 to 20 minutes, even 10 minutes is fine.
you can do that just to warm up those muscles help get the blood flowing
circulating get everything kind of loose and ready to get stretched. and then
after you do your exercises then you want to use ice to kind of cool
everything back down. if you've caused a little bit of inflammation, which is fine,
then you're just kind of calming that back down. so you can see here this one
is great for a knee wrap because you have the strap on the bottom, and you have the
strap on the top. and it really does full-coverage and that's what I like
because a lot of times you know a smaller little ice pack is gonna be fine,
but if you are really trying to either warm some stuff up or cool something
back down, even if it's like you've just got the
injury and you want to get some ice on it to prevent some of that swelling. see
how it comes all the way here and here? and as we've been talking about, your
calf muscles come up and cross the knee. your hamstrings, your quads,
those IT bands, those adductors, you know they're all along the leg. they're
not just at the knee. so when you have this nice you know large hot and cold
gel pack, it does a good job of covering that whole area. so I'm not just you know
getting my knee cold or hot, I'm getting the whole area which is really what you
want because that's what you're working. you're working the whole leg because the
muscles are down here and the muscles are up here as well. and so you can see
it's got these nice long straps as well, and they're stretchy, so you can get some
nice compression in there as well. if you wanted to even then cross it a little
bit so you get some compression around that knee that works as well. so it's got
a really nice component to it having the nice straps that are large that they're
not these small straps that you can barely get around. it molds to my knee or
to my body part very very well and then again I think the coolest component of
these gel packs and then the wrap itself is that you can heat it and you can use
it for cold, so you don't have to have all these bunch of different ice packs
and hot packs and stuff. it's a kind of a one-stop shop. and so if you're
interested in purchasing any other Cureve natural therapy products, you can
click on the link up there. so now we're going to go into a quad stretch.
so the quad muscle is a big one for knee pain because it's connected to that
kneecap or that patella. and so if it's tight, pulling on that kneecap, then the
kneecap sometimes isn't tracking right. sometimes it's sitting too high and that
can cause a lot of pain. so if you still have your strap and you're using it and
it's already on on your leg, it's easy just to kind of continue all the way
around. I'm gonna switch sides just cause I'm gonna roll over onto my stomach and
I want you to be able to see the closest side. but this time you want to take the
loop and go ahead and put it around your ankle. so it's not around your foot,
it's around your ankle this time. and then you're just gonna kind of roll over
and what I like to do is hold the strap like this so it comes around my shoulder.
you want to be comfortable when you're
stretching because again you want to be very relaxed. so if you need to lie all
the way down, go ahead and do that. I'm just propping up so I can talk to you. so
then you're just going to take the strap and just start pulling trying to bring
your foot as close as you can towards the bottom area. so you should feel it in
your quad right on the front of your leg that's touching the floor right now.
so again it shouldn't be painful, it should just be some nice tension, a little bit
uncomfortable. so again you want to hold it for 30 seconds and do that 3 times. so
now going into a little bit of strengthening. the big thing with
strengthening the knee for knee pain is when you're first starting off, you want
to start pretty gently .you don't want to go into big exercises because you might
just irritate it more. so starting off just doing a quad set it's probably
going to be the easiest thing to do. so with the quad set I like to put
something underneath my knee to start off with. you want a little bit of a
target. you can use a little cut up pool noodle like this is. you can take a towel
and roll it up, but you just want to have something that's a little bit of a
target. so with a quad set, what you're doing is you're contracting your quad
muscle to try and straighten out your knee or push it down into the floor or
whatever is underneath it. but your heel needs to stay on the floor - sometimes
people do this and you're not exactly getting the right exercise if you do
that. you want to keep a heel down and you want to imagine that you're pushing
down that knee as hard as you can into the floor. and you should see this muscle
contract or set as in a quad set. hold it for about three to five seconds and then
relax it. and so you're just going to be doing about maybe 10 of them, doing that
hold. you can do a couple sets if you want to a couple times throughout the
day. so they're pretty easy to do so you can do these while you're watching TV,
while you're doing some work, and just kind of really get that muscle working.
because a lot of times, that quad muscle is what's contributing to that knee pain.
so the last exercise is just going to be a simple heel raise or calf raise. and so
this just works those calves. and again since they cross that knee
joint, you want to make sure to work those because sometimes those are a part of
the knee problem as well. so put your feet about shoulder width apart and then
all you're going to do is come up on your toes lifting your heels. the
important part of this is to slowly come back down.
really control. so you're not doing this just using momentum because that's not
really doing anything but nice and slow coming up, and nice and slow coming back
down. make sure and hold on to something if you need to. don't try these the first
time without holding on to something. you can even just go to your counter top and
do that, and then eventually then you can just kind of maybe go to one hand, one
finger, so you're working it just a little bit more. again just starting off
with maybe ten couple sets of those couple times a day just to really start
getting those muscles working again. whew that was good. now I'm cooling down with
ice only about 10 to 15 minutes when you're using ice that's all you need, but
it feels really good right now after working it out. if you're interested in
purchasing purchasing any of the Cureve natural therapy products, make sure you
click on the link up there, and don't forget to subscribe by clicking down there.
and remember, be safe, have fun, and I hope you feel better soon.