Knee Pain Relief Tips Including Hot and Cold Therapy
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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.
Patellofemoral pain is pain under and around the kneecap. Sometimes when your kneecap does not track properly in the groove, it can rub on either side of the bone. If this occurs for a long period of time, it can cause irritation, inflammation, and pain.
This knee pain relief routine can help strengthen and loosen up the muscles around the knee and hip area. These knee exercises are done in real time, so it’s easy to follow along with the routine.
Bowed legs (aka bowlegs, bow legs, or genu varum) can come from weak & tight muscles, bone deformations, and/or degeneration. These stretches & exercises are designed to help if it’s coming from weak and/or tight hip muscles.
Peripheral neuropathy is basically when you have damage to your peripheral nerves from either a trauma or disease. This can cause your hands and/or feet become numb and tingly. I'll focus on the feet/legs for this video.
These knee pain relief stretches & exercises don’t necessarily need to be done in bed, but they may help relieve knee pain in the morning before getting up, and/or when going to bed at night.
Hamstring pain or a hamstring strain can be very painful. The hamstrings help us walk, lift our legs backwards, and bend our knees. When you have a hamstring strain, all these movements can be painful. These hamstring stretches and exercises should help relieve a hamstring strain.
Percussive Massage Therapy for knee pain relief is a new rehab treatment that uses fast, soft pulses over a short amount of time to get deep down into the muscle fibers.
Sciatic nerve pain often comes from tight muscles along its pathway. The hamstrings, IT band, and adductors can all contribute to compressing the sciatic nerve. These stretches might help.
Sponsored Content: This video contains paid product placement. Thank you to iReliev for sponsoring this video and providing Doctor Jo with free Hot/Cold Gel Packs to use. If you purchase products from these links/ads, Doctor Jo will earn a commission from qualifying purchases.
