Dr's Casebook: Maintain a healthy weight to protect your knees

Dr Keith Souter writes: I have run the Wakefield hospice 10k the last couple of occasions, but as a family event came up I had to cancel my entry this year. I then started training for a longer event, but unfortunately, during a parkrun when I tried to pick up my pace on the final lap I felt a popping in one of my knees. It didn’t stop me from finishing, but afterwards it gradually increased in pain.

This is a fairly typical case of runner’s knee otherwise known as patella-femoral pain syndrome. It is a condition that primarily affects the articulation of the kneecap ( the patella) and the thigh bone (the femur.)

As I said, it often comes on after the run and people then find it hurts when going up and down stairs, squatting, or sitting for a long period with bent knees.

Physician, heal thyself, is the old expression. So, I immediately started using the RICE principle. Very simply, this stands for Rest-Ice-Compression-Elevation. Although you might think that heat will make it feel more comfortable, ice from a pack of frozen peas rapped in a towel actually reduces swelling and inflammation.

But it all set me thinking about knee pain and the importance of trying to protect them for the future. Indeed, one of the main things that you can do to reduce the effect of osteoarthritis is to keep the weight down.

With normal walking on flat ground the force on each knee is about one and a half times your body weight. When you run you actually increase this force substantially on each knee. Going on an incline, uphill or upstairs, or downhill and downstairs you increase the force on each knee two or three times your body weight. Squatting or bending right down to tie shoelaces increases the force up to five times.

So, the less body weight you have the less the force on your knees. One of the best ways of protecting your knees is to stay trim.