How To Wish Your Knee Pain Away In 6 Easy Steps

When I was growing up, my father frequently passed along nuggets of wisdom in the form of short phrases that still stick with me to this day.

One of those sayings was in regards to me wishing I would get a good grade on a math test. His response was, “Wish in one hand, sh*t in the other and see which one fills up faster.”

Now before you get all offended and decide to stop reading, take for a moment to see the genius in the statement.

It may have been a little rough at the time while I was in elementary school however, the phrase did teach me a life long lesson that I applied to my own healing after ligament (ACL) reconstruction back in 1999. No matter how much I wished my knee pain would go away, the fact of the matter was, I needed to do the things necessary to make sure I was setting up the conditions for my knee to heal.

No one else could make me do it or do it for me.

It is important to understand having a good solid game plan is key to resolving the pain other wise you will still be wishing the pain goes away after you pick up your prescription at the pharmacy, after you go to the doctor’s to get the cortizone shot, or after you wake up from the anethesia in the recovery room.

Please do not mis-understand me. If something it broken or torn. Get it fixed! However, if nothing is showing up on an X-ray, a CT scan, or an MRI then the solution for your painful knees is not at the doctor’s office.

Like I had mentioned earlier I needed to setup the conditions in my knee would go away which meant everything that I was doing at that time was creating the conditions for my knee to hurt.

This point is huge!

You get this one and the path to resolving your situation will light right up and become apparently clear.

So here are some condition that need to be looked at in order to resolve your specific situation.

Sleep – How much sleep do you get per night? Sleep is what your body needs in order to heal itself. If you are getting less than 9 hours of sleep per night then your body is not getting the recovery it needs in order to heal damaged tissue.

Water – Are you drinking any? Anything that’s not water doesn’t count! Your body is made up of 80% water (at least it’s supposed to be). When your body doesn’t get enough water it needs to rob it from your bones and joints to make sure there is enough to keep your brain and your blood functioning properly. Yes, your body is that smart and knows how to re-allocate its water resources. The proper amount of water is key for your body to be able to heal the damaged cells causing your knee pain.

Nutrition – What kind of food do you eat? In general the better fuel you put in the gas tank of your car, the better the performance you get. The same thing goes for the speed at which your body heals damaged tissue. The better the food the faster the healing that can take place and the faster the pain in your knee can disappear.

Exercise – What kind of leg exercises are you doing? Hint: Are you trying to strengthen the muscles in your legs or the ligaments in the joint? Because these two types of exercises are extremely different. One makes your the pain go away, the other tends to make the pain worse. Only someone who has gotten to the other side of severe knee pain is really going to know.

Stretching – Do you stretch? If you do, how long? Are you stretching the key muscles that contribute to chronic knee pain? Proper stretching helps to balance the tension in the body so the pressure doesn’t all end up in you knees causing you more pain. This also ties into exercise and if you don’t stretch you are just strengthening an already dysfunctional tension pattern. Proper stretching will help your knees get better, improper stretching at best will probably do nothing at all.

Breathing – So you may ask, “What the heck does breathing have to do with my knees?” I would answer, “Everything!” First of all, if you don’t breathe, you die. If you hold your breath your body begins to immediately to tense up. Think of the very last time you felt a twinge of pain in your knee, the first thing you did was hold your breath. The more tension you have in your body the less space there is in your joints. When your joints have less space they rub on the nerves sending a signal to your brain that you are experiencing pain. The more you breathe properly the more relaxed your body gets the more space your joints have and the less pain you feel.

All of these conditions and the proper amount of each are crucial to eliminating your chronic knee pain. If your knee pain elimination strategy does not include all of these components you are leaving so much out of the equation and odds are your situation either will not go away or if it does for a time, will return.

Wishing isn’t going to work, take it from my dad.

You are the one that needs to take these 6 steps.

No one else can