Runner’s knee pain is a common pain occurred in the knee and surrounding connective tissue which is caused by activities that continuously exert great amounts of pressure on the joint. We can treat the disease through the RICE method (rest, ice, compression and elevation), pain control, and preventative strengthening and stretching. For serious cases, Surgery is required.
Identification for Knee Pain Running
Runner’s knee, also named as Patello-femoral Pain Syndrome refers to pain at the front of the knee that may be caused by many reasons. Runners, manual laborers, and athletes are most susceptible to this injury. Those affected may suffer from mild to serious pain in and around the kneecap, which may turn to be chronic pain due to too much treatment and lack of treatment.
Causes
It is said by the American Orthopaedic Society for Sports Medicine that runner’s knee pain usuall occur due to overuse of the joint during sports or other activities. Under such circumstances, knee is bent over and over again, which arouse irritation of the nerves and connective tissues surrounding the kneecap. There may be some other causes, including injury to the kneecap as a result of falling, hyperextended tendons, atrophied or otherwise weakened quadriceps muscles, misalignment of any of the bones in the hips, femurs, or kneecaps, flat feet, fallen arches, or overpronation (where landing on the foot after a step collapses the foot’s arches, leading to overstretch of the muscles and tendons).
Diagnosis for Knee Pain Running
If someone suffers from runner’s knee pain, he tends to get an aching pain surrounding the knee, particularly in the place where the femur (thighbone) and kneecap meet each other. He will get a pain when he bends, kneels and squat. It gets worse when walking down an incline. Those who has suffered with runner’s knee may has swelling knee joint and a grinding or popping feeling when flexing or moving the knee within its range of motion.
Under this kind of situation, a physical exam is needed first, and then the doctor can exam the affected through an X-ray, MRI, or CT (computed tomography) scan.
Treatment for Knee Pain Running
It is said on the website www.kneepainrunning.com, mostly it will take four to six weeks to be recovered from runner’s knee pain, and the RICE method is regarded as standard treatment for runner’s knee pain. RICE refers to rest, ice, compression and elevation. When applying this method, you’d better follow this order: resting the aching muscle, then place ice on the affected area every 20 minutes. Ice helps alleviating swelling, removing stress from the stimulated nerves and connective tissue.
Compression and elevation will greatly contribute to the reduction of the swelling and speed up the healing process. When patient is on a rest and does some exercise, he can use an elastic bandage, and raise the affected area to a higher place so that the swelling will be removed from the muscle.
Those who has suffered runner’s knee had better apply ice on the affected area three to four times a day until the pain has totally disappeared. If the pain does not disappear within a week, you’d better go to see a doctor, for serious cases, you need to undergo a surgery to eliminate damaged cartilage or to reorder the kneecap to make sure that the each part of your body bear even pressure when you are walking and taking exercise.
Pain Control for Runner’s Knee Pain
There are some medicines which can be used to alleviate runner’s knee pain. Nonsteroidal anti-inflammatories such as ibuprofen and acetaminophen can be used to alleviate inflammation and swelling around the knee. Meanwhile, both of them can also ease pain of related muscle and connective tissue aches.
Stretching exercise and massage do well in relieving pain around the knee and its connective tissues. Those affected can stretch the quadriceps muscle and massage the muscle tissue gently, which proves to be very effective in relieving knee pain running.
Prevention
If you consult the website Shelley Drozd at Runnersworld.com, you may know that we can prevent future episodes of runner’s knee by resorting to the following methods: exercising and extending the thigh muscles to strengthen it, using shoe inserts or arch supports, doing exercise while wearing a knee brace, and losing weight. For cyclists, they’d better keep the seat in an appropriate height to make sure that their knees don’t extend beyond it range of motion while riding.