There are several factors that can contribute to knee pain. You can lower your risk factor by:
- Maintaining a healthy weight: Excess weight adds more strain on your joints and increases the chances of osteoarthritis.
- Increasing your strength and flexibility: Stretching before playing a sport or exercising helps warm up your muscles, increases your flexibility, and decreases your chances of injury. Similarly, strong hamstring and quadricep muscles help strengthen and stabilize your knee joints.
- Using correct movement patterns: No matter what sport you play, it’s important to maintain the correct form so you don’t injure yourself.
- Changing the way you workout: Avoid movement that puts stress on your knees and high-impact activities like running. Instead try low-impact activities like walking and swimming.
- Avoiding inflammatory foods: If you have knee arthritis, avoiding certain foods can reduce inflammation in the knee. Try limiting your consumption of processed foods, fried foods, sugar, and alcohol.