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Is hot/cold therapy an effective way to help relieve knee pain and other pains throughout the body? Here’s some info about hot and cold therapy as well as some other techniques to help relieve knee pain.
While there is some debate on the issue, in general, I like to use hot therapy to help warm up and loosen the muscles before exercise, especially if there is pain and doing a traditional warm up might be too difficult. Then cold therapy afterwards to help reduce inflammation and help calm down irritation. Hot and/or cold therapy should only be done about 10-15 minutes at a time.
Once the knee is warmed up, it should be easier and more comfortable to stretch. Calf stretches, hamstring stretches, IT band stretches, and quad stretches using a strap are a great way to loosen up the muscles around the knee.
Then for exercises, some gentle isometrics exercises are great to start with. Quad sets and hamstring sets will help strengthen the muscles without the big movements that might be painful.
Finally a bridge is a great exercise to help strength your hamstrings and glutes.
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