The knee is always in constant motion, making it more likely to suffer an injury that might affect how well you go about with your daily activities. Therefore, it’s best to put in place measures that prevent it from getting injured in the first place.
After all, prevention is better than cure. This is even more important because as you get older, your knees will start experiencing wear and tear. While its normal to have some wearing away of the knee cartilage, it’s essential to maintain the health of your knee joints. Moreover, the knee is often susceptible to injuries that can rupture the bones surrounding your knee, including sprains and tearing away soft tissue.
Therefore, it’s best to stay safe and safeguard yourself from experiencing this undesirable condition. If you’re looking for useful insight into maintain healthy knees, look no further. Here’s an overview of some valuable tips that will be beneficial in your quest to prevent any knee-related issues.
1. Lose Weight
As you get older, the rate at which your knee cartilage wears away increases. This is caused by the bones starting to rub against each other, causing the joints not to generate synovial fluid that offers a much-needed lubrication. If you’re obese or overweight, this means you’ll be placing additional pressure on the joints. This is even worse when walking as this puts extra pressure that’s equal to five times your body weight. As a result, this either triggers or increases the speed at which your joints deteriorate.
2. Stay in Motion
You should always observe one crucial rule to ensure your joints remain in excellent health and that is to stay constantly in motion. It’s advised you do this to reduce the stiffness of the joints. Therefore, prioritize physical movement of the joints at all times to ensure they continue to function optimally. This should especially be the case if you watch a lot of TV or read a lot.
3. Maintain Good Posture
You should always strive to maintain a correct pasture posture at all times when standing, sitting and making repetitive motions. This is recommended as it lowers the risk that the surrounding muscles might get injured and prevents added stress on the joints. This happens because imbalanced posture leads to a change in the body’s center of gravity, thereby adding extra strain on the hips and knees.
Ensure you’re always in a correct posture by standing tall while your head is aligned with your shoulders which should be directly above your hips. Consequently, your hips should be in line with the knees, which are parallel to your feet.
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4. Exercise
Regular exercise helps in strengthening the muscles, tendons and ligaments around your joints across your body. With the primary role of the knee joints stabilizing the ligaments, tendons, and leg muscles, this is clearly necessary. The workouts that help strengthen the supporting muscles in your core, legs and butt, plus the knees, are step-ups and squats.
5. Properly Lift Heavy Items
Another effective way of maintaining your knee joint’s health is to correctly lift young kids, boxes or avoiding weights that exceed your lifting capacity. Make sure to do this or else you risk straining the supporting muscles in the legs, hips and back or eroding the cartilage around the knees and developing knee pain.
To properly lift an item, and promote knee pain relief, always make sure to do so by using your leg muscles but not twisting your body or knees as this adds power and stability to this action. When doing this, you need to bend your knees, crouch, lift the load and then straighten your legs as you do the lifting.
You should also request assistance when raising bulky items and ensuring you don’t twist your body either to the left or right when picking up objects and you will avoid any knee injuries.
6. Wear the Right Shoes
Many people usually ignore the need to wear comfy and supportive shoes resulting in knee injuries. However, you shouldn’t assume or else risk a knee injury due to improper joint alignment in your lower ends.
To prevent this, get suitable shoes depending on the activity you’re performing. For example, if it’s running shoes you want, choose ones that are excellent for your foot and posture. With the right shoe, you prevent any postural abnormalities that can lead to knee osteoarthritis and knee pain. This is because any outward or inward rolling of your feet is avoided altogether while moving and will even give you some knee pain relief.
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7. Strengthen Your Muscles
To lower the chances of getting a knee injury, you need to ensure your muscles are always as strong as possible. You can achieve this by doing strengthening exercises that improve or maintain your muscle strength. Workouts you can do as part of your muscle strengthening routine include weight training. While doing this is advantageous as it reduces pain and increases your joint’s stability, never overdo it to avoid injury.
8. Wear Knee Supports
Are you experiencing pain due to arthritis or from playing in a highly intense contact sport? If so, then wearing knee supports such as elastic compression sleeves is advisable for most knee injuries. With these supports, your knee joints get the much-needed additional support. As a result, this drastically lowers the chances of getting a knee injury or developing knee pain.
9. Warm-up and Stretch
When partaking in athletic activities, exercises or working, you usually use your knees a lot. Because of this, make sure to enhance your knee’s mobility and range of motion by stretching your ankles, hips and knees before doing any workouts or physically demanding activities. Otherwise, your ankles and hips might be tight, and this eventually affects your knees.
Avoid this by setting aside some time to stretch your muscles in the back and front of your thighs, thereby reducing tension in the tendons. Subsequently, this helps eliminate any pressure that might be on your knees that might trigger injury.
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10. Avoid Pounding and Twisting the Knee Joints
Some activities such as aerobics, jogging and running impact the knees as the knee joints get hit hard. But because you might not be willing to stop these activities, it’s best to find ways of safeguarding your knees. You can avoid rotating your hips and knees by maintaining an appropriate posture to protect your knees.
Another alternative would be swimming, walking, or using an elliptical machine to prevent excessive pounding to the knee.
Takeaway
The knee is a delicate part of your body that needs to be fully functional and healthy to go about your daily tasks effortlessly. But knowing what needs to be done to achieve this isn’t information everyone knows. If this was you, then the helpful tips mentioned above will undoubtedly help you learn ways of looking after your knees and safeguarding them from injury.
