Knee Pain Exercises Especially for Women
By Dr. Ron McCluskey
by Dr. Ron McCluskey
Need to strengthen knees because of knee pain? Because of
their anatomy, women are more likely to have knee pain. However, much of this
pain can be relieved with a few simple exercises.
A young lady in a baseball uniform recently came to see me in
the emergency room. She had pain in her knees that had been increasing over the
last few weeks. It had gotten to the point that she was actually limping. What
to do?
A brief exam and a couple of x-rays later and we knew what the
problem was. There was inflammation of the joint between the knee cap (patella) and
the knee (distal femur).
Many women suffer from the same ailment. The reason is that
because of the wider pelvis that women have, the muscles of the thigh tend to
pull the knee cap off to the side. The result is that it gets increasingly
inflamed and painful.
The pain from this type of problem is normally just in the front
of the knee. It will be painful to straighten out your leg when you are sitting.
It will be tender on the side of the knee cap.
If you have this problem, the good news is that normally you can
completely relieve your pain with a few simple exercises.
The goal of these exercises is to strengthen the mucles of the
front of the thigh (quadriceps muscle) that will pull the knee cap straight.
To strenghten the quadriceps, simply lie down on your bed and do
straight leg raises. Don't bend the knee. It is already inflamed and you don't
need to make that worse. Just repeatedly raise your leg. This will strengthen
the quadriceps.
If you get a bit tired from doing this ten times, just keep
doing it. But, if you are in pretty good shape already and this does not make
you tired at all, it is time to step things up a bit.
When you are ready, the next step is to do the same exercise
with weights. To do this just get an old purse and put a can of food in it and
repeat the straight leg raises. Pretty easy eh? As you get stronger, gradually
increase the weight in the old purse.
During this time, if you can take them, a good anti-inflammatory
medications such as Ibuprofen will help get rid of the inflammation and aleviate
the pain you are having in your knee.
However, by doing these exercises regularly, you should not need
to use the medication for more than a few days.
About the Author
Dr. Ron is an Emergency Room physician with over twenty years experience in the health care field. He often treats people for problems with their pain. Come to
Eight Steps to Health now for more great resources.
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