Live Life Team
A sore knee can be one of the worst things to happen just because of how sudden and sharp the pain is. No sooner are you transported from happily lying down to being in a world of discomfort with no obvious fix.
Luckily, there are several ways to look into home treatments and tips for joint pain, but not all of them are equal, and there are different fixes to look at depending on the severity of your injury. To start with, it is best looking at the easiest options before ruling them out.
See what takes the pain away
While this may seem obvious to some degree, when you are in pain it is not quite as easy to think straight. Start by seeing how you can prop the knee up, and if there are any angles you can get it at which suddenly drop how sharp the pain is.
From there, basic treatments can include massaging the area yourself, and also applying either hot or cold presses to the area. This can be anything as basic as a hot water bottle or some ice or peas wrapped up in a tea towel. This allows us to see if any of the basics work before moving on to some of the other potential treatments. Always consider:
Gentle flexing – can you identify exactly where it hurts?
Finding out what effect it has when you apply pressure
Try and isolate the nerves around it with hot or cold presses
Put some support underneath it to give the joint some rest
While these will help, they may not rid you of the pain, and this will arguably require some more work to help alleviate the issue.
Strengthening exercises
Considered one of the best way to help deal with joint pains as it strengthens everything else around it, it comes high on the list of home treatments and tips for joint pain simply because it can have long lasting effects which prevent the pain from coming back immediately. Although the likes of painkillers can help you sleep better with joint pain in your knee, they will not necessarily stop it from coming back the next day.
Try leaning on something to one side, like a wall, and simply work on moving your leg back and forth, like a pendulum. Do this several times, and make sure it is slow enough not to cause further discomfort. From here, go side to side a few times and see if you can notice the difference. It is useful to think about:
Where exactly the pain is so you can be more mindful of it and adjust how you walk
How the muscles are around it and whether they are inflamed
Which exercises appear to be having the best effect in terms of pain relief
If there are other ways you can support your knee, by changing clothing and adding tubed supports
If all else fails, painkillers are always worth trying, but remember these are not a long term solution, and to consult a medical professional if problems persist.
Useful source: https://www.webmd.com/pain-management/knee-pain/knee-pain-dos-and-donts
