What to do if your knee hurts?
The most important thing to do if any joint in your body hurts of course is to consult the specialist. This is the shortest cut to know what really is going on and to manage it correctly and put an end to the problem.... But in addition to the importance of the diagnosis for management of your problem, there are general pieces of advice and instructions for every single joint in your body regardless of the cause of the of problem. You can consider these some kind of maintenance service that you do to protect and maintain the joints. The first thing here is to keep your movement and activities only within the limits of the pain that you get in that joint. You should never stress a painful joint in an activity and say "I will conquer the problem" because this way the problem will be the one to conquer your joint.
For the knee in particular, you will walk less if walking increases the pain. You will also avoid standing for long periods of time. And when you sit, you will make sure your knee is semi-flexed or semi-bent; it should not be fully extended or fully flexed. An angle of 130 degrees is optimal. Also when you sit on a chair, better choose one with an arm rest so that you push the arm rest with your hand to help your knees when you are rising from the sitting position.
Always choose a higher chair and avoid a sofa that is too low because in a low seat, it's a long distance for the knee when you are standing up and it will feel awkward specially if you have been sitting for a long time. For the same reason, avoid sitting on the floor. If one knee hurts more, make sure you go upstairs with the good knee first and downstairs with the bad knee first.
Lastly, you can always use ice packs; apply them to the front of the knee for 15 minutes at least once before bed time. If your knee pains are caused by osteoarthritis or excess stress to the joint, your symptoms likely will be less with those instructions over a couple of days, and if they persist, of course, you will see the specialist.
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This post was prepared and published by Dr. Hatem Eleishi. Dr. Hatem Eleishi is a professor of rheumatology at Cairo university (Egypt) and is especially dedicated to supporting arthritis patients with online educational videos and articles about arthritis causes and treatment. He also runs a rheumatology clinic in Cairo and a center for online medical consultations that, in addition to providing online rheumatology consultations, also provides online medical consultations in several different medical specialties by expert consultants from Egypt, Canada and the United States.
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