Knee osteoarthritis treatment | 3 exercises to postpone surgery

Knee osteoarthritis is caused by the disappearance of the cartilage in the knee. This can lead to knee pain but doesn’t always.

That’s because the pain of a worn knee can be reduced by doing the right knee exercises, along with the right lifestyle changes.

This allows you to postpone a new knee operation for a few years yourself.

This article will explain exactly what causes knee osteoarthritis and how you can prevent it. I describe the symptoms of a worn knee and what exercises you can do to reduce your pain. This means that you can often postpone an operation for several years.

One of the things you can do right away is to wear a knee brace. A knee brace reduces the pressure on your knee joint so that you will immediately experience fewer knee complaints. This allows you to move more, making your knee stronger and further reducing pain.

Read on to find out what else is possible:

By knee osteoarthritis, we mean a knee in which the cartilage has decreased, causing knee complaints. It is also called a worn-out knee and can occur in various places in the knee. In the knee, we speak of gonarthrosis after the Latin name for the knee: articulatio genus.

The most commonplace for knee osteoarthritis is the inside of the knee. Due to the shape of the knee joint, the greatest forces are exerted on the inside. This ensures that the cartilage disappears faster here than on the outside of the knee.

There is also cartilage under the kneecap, which can slowly disappear. We then speak of patellofemoral arthrosis. Patella is the Latin word for kneecap, and the femur is that for the thigh bone.

Cartilage wear and tear is a natural process and happens to everyone. However, it goes faster with some than with others. There are several reasons for this.

Also read: Knee pain | All causes and treatments with home exercises

To successfully treat the pain of a worn knee, it is important to improve the knee’s strength, mobility, and stability.

Lifestyle factors also play a major role. If you manage to lose 10 or maybe 20 kg, this will greatly reduce the knee’s pain.

Also, losing weight ensures that the amount of belly fat decreases and the osteoarthritis process will decrease. This makes the cartilage calmer and will cause less pain.

Cycling is a good exercise in knee osteoarthritis to lubricate the knee joint. The movements during cycling stimulate the production of synovial fluid in the knee. This will lubricate the knee, making it smoother and making it less stiff and painful. An exercise bike is ideal for this because you can adjust the resistance and height, and you do not have to get on and off every time.

The first exercise is designed to improve the mobility of the knee. Mobilizing, the knee joint puts less strain on the cartilage, which reduces pain.

This also greatly affects patellofemoral osteoarthritis because the exercise makes your kneecap move better over your knee joint. By improving the knee’s mobility, you can walk better and more so that your knee pain decreases even further.

The exercise goes as follows:

• Sit in a chair with your healthy leg crossed in front of your aching leg
• Move your healthy leg backward, slowly bending your aching leg
• Bend the knee as far as it will go
• Hold for 20 seconds
• Repeat this 3 times

You can also find the execution of the exercise in this video.

Do exercise several times a day. The bending may hurt because you don’t load your knee during the exercise. This way you don’t cause damage to your knee.

The second exercise is to improve the strength of your thigh muscles. When your thigh muscles get stronger, the force acting on your knee decreases. Your thigh muscles relieve pressure on your knee.

Your thigh muscles also ensure that your kneecap moves well over your knee while bending and extending your knee. Because of this, this exercise works well for both gonarthrosis and patellofemoral osteoarthritis.

The exercise goes as follows:

• Lie on your back with your legs straight
• Pull your toes towards you and lift your leg straight
• Repeat this 10 times
• Do this 3 times for both legs

You can also find the execution of the exercise in this video.

Because you have no pressure on your knee during the exercise, this exercise ensures that you can strengthen your thigh muscles without increasing your knee complaints. You can then expand the number of repetitions to 3×20 repetitions.

When the pain in your knee decreases, you can also start doing squats and lunges. In the beginning, these exercises are often too heavy because they cause direct pressure on your knee and can worsen your complaints. Repeat the exercise twice a day.

The third exercise for a worn-out knee is to improve the stability of the knee. This exercise is also very suitable for meniscus complaints or other forms of knee pain.

Because the shape of your knee changes and the muscles become stronger, they also have to learn to work better together. The better your knees work together, the better they can support your knee.

You can train the stability of your knee in the following way:

• Stand on 1 leg
• Slightly bend the leg you are standing on
• Try to keep this up for as long as possible without holding on
• Repeat this several times

You can also find the execution of the exercise in this video.

Do the exercise a few times a day. You can do it while brushing your teeth, cooking, or watching television. To make the exercise even more difficult, you can close your eyes. As a result, you have less control of your eyes, so that the stability is completely on your muscles.