- Swelling
- Stiffness
- Weakness
- Warm sensations
- Popping sounds
- Redness
- Inability to fully straighten your leg or knee
Knee pain treatments: How to get relief
“So, the best thing would be…the RICE method…rest, ice, compression and elevation,” Bicos explained. “That’s kind of the biggest thing. [A] bag of ice on it helps with inflammation. And then just getting it up and elevated and taking either the pressure off or not doing…activity for a little time helps.”
Knee pain medications
Beaumont Health recommends using anti-inflammatory medications to help find knee pain relief.
What’s the best painkiller for knee pain?
“Tylenol is relatively safe to take. Ibuprofen or Motrin are fine, you know, sometimes depending on your other medical conditions,” advised Bicos.
“There’s [also] a lot of these anti-inflammatory gels, what is called Voltaren gel,” he continued. “It used to be prescription strength in the U.S. and now it’s basically over the counter…it can definitely help to relieve the inflammation within the knee.”
RELATED: 5 Ways To Reduce Knee Pain During Exercise
Knee pain exercises and stretches
The AAOS recommends several stretches and exercises that can help condition and strengthen your knee, including:
- Hamstring curls
- Heel cord stretch
- Half squats
- Hip abduction
- Standing quadriceps stretch
- Calf raises
- Heel cord stretch
- Supine hamstring stretch
- Hip adduction (bringing your legs inward)
- Leg presses
“Really, initially, it’s just making sure the knee doesn’t get stiff,” Bicos explained. “We do recommend making sure that it [the leg] comes fully out straight and people can work on bending it.”
He cautioned that stretches for knee pain should only be done with the recommendation of your doctor.
“Sometimes if it’s an operative tear, something we’re going to do surgery with, you know, we do want to make sure that the knee is not too stiff going into surgery,” Bicos said. “But other tears…we don’t want them to move it for…maybe 10 to 13 days or 14 days just so that tear can heal.”
What exercises for knee pain does Bicos recommend?
“I always say…yoga is great. Pilates are great, biking is great, too, anything that’s non-impact. Swimming is also great,” he said.
Knee pain self-care
Here are a few key knee pain self-care strategies that Beaumont Health recommends:
- Eat a healthy, well-balanced diet
- Try to lose excess weight, to ease the stress and pressure on your knee
- Avoid activities that make your knee pain worse
Living with knee pain
When you’re living with knee pain, a knee brace for pain can help with daily activities, especially if you’ve got a sprain or torn cartilage, according to Johns Hopkins Medicine.
Bicos noted that while milder knee issues may heal on their own, it’s important to know when to see your doctor.
“Give it about maybe 10 to 14 days. If it doesn’t get better, that’s typically when you want to come in,” he advised. “The other thing is that if there’s a lot of swelling, and there’s some sort of trauma that happened, you also want to come in because that could be a sign of something… tearing within the knee.”