Knee Pain - Runner
I am a 49 year old female who ran from 1976 - 1995. I was in the Air Force and at peak was running 6 miles daily. Around 1985 I first noticed the creaking sort of sound in my knee which didn't cause pain, just sounded funny and I usually only heard it when I was going upstairs. In 1988-89 I begin having problems with severe swelling. Everytime I walked or ran (I had backed off to about 3 miles a day at this point) my knees would swell and generally by the next morning it would be gone. Well eventually it began to take 24 - 48 hours to get better and I had quit running altogether. I would walk whenever I could but obviously with all the pain that was getting more and more difficult. Doctors would x-ray and say probably arthritis but never saw anything in the x-rays. By last year the pain had gotten so bad that I had to "get my sea legs" as I called it everytime I stood up from my desk job or got out of a car or even out of bed. I was taking arthritis medication and glucosamine chondritin (the liquid form) and all of that was making the pain tolerable for the main part of the day. I went to a sports orthopedic doctor who examined by knees, did an MRI and said I had "significant" wear and tear on my cartilage in my knee. He thought I might benefit from cortisone shots. Not being happy with some diagnosis that wasn't going to do anything for me I went to another doctor, who recommended surgery to see how the knee actually looked. He ended up cleaning up debris and smoothing things out and telling me that he wanted me to wait 5-10 years before he actually started replacing parts. After the surgery I went through 1 week of physical therapy which involved your traditional knee exercises which evolved to weight equipment that strengthened all leg muscles in general. It was also recommended to do bicycling for 5-10 minutes building up to 20 minutes regardless of whatever other cardio exercise I did. It was explained to me that the weaker the leg muscles the more pressure gets exerted on the knee joint.
Well I'm happy to report that the stronger my legs get the less pain I feel in my knee. The arthroscopic surgery reduced my pain to nearly nothing the first month or two and now I still have pain but I think having the debris cleaned out and getting it smoothed out lessens the irritation and the swelling which reduces the pain. So work all you leg muscles, even if you are athletically active work out on weight equipment if accessible. Upper legs, lower legs, ankles, abductors, all of it. Get good muscle tone throughout your legs and maybe you won't go through what I've been through. I've recently taken up Pilates to try to work out without actually doing anything which causes impact but I don't see any point in spending years between now and retirement waiting until I'm older to have my knee parts replaced.
From:
panacea911@knology.net
