What Footwear Should a Knee Pain Sufferer Look for?

A short post today, drawn once again from the comment section.

Someone threw out the question: What’s the best footwear for someone with knee pain?

Ah yes. This is familiar territory. In Hong Kong, one of my experiments was with a pair of fancy $100 shoes that promised to lessen my knee pain by some impressive percentage.

I was really eager to try these out, thinking they might even shorten my time to healing. So I put them on and ... it was a disaster. They didn’t help at all. $100 down the toilet.

Now, sometimes I suppose that your physical therapist might advise special footwear to correct some “imbalance” in your step or stride.

I would be rather skeptical about this. That’s me anyway. Physical therapists all too often like to put forth theories of pain resulting from crookedness and imbalances.

I’m doubtful that malalignment is a significant problem for most knee pain patients, as I’ve said repeatedly before. Dr. Scott Dye, who I respect greatly, is also skeptical that it lies at the root of as much knee pain as the therapeutic community would have us believe.

So back to footwear: Does it matter at all?

Yes, I think it does, and maybe a lot. But my requirements would be simple: comfortable and well-cushioned shoes, such as for running. Running shoes are designed to lessen impacts on the joints, absorbing some shocks before they reach your knees.

To me, that’s a pretty good match for what I’d want.

The person who wrote the comment also asked about going barefoot around an apartment or wearing slippers. Hmm. Not sure there’s a big difference there, but thoughts from others are welcome.

Stay safe all!

Could I Have Healed My Knees Without Quitting My Job?

This question occasionally comes up. It was in the comments section recently, and since I’ve decided to try to flip as many comments into posts as possible, I thought, “Why not?”

So, could I have gotten better without quitting my job?

The honest answer, really, is I just don’t know. I’m doubtful. But maybe I could have. It would have been much harder certainly.

But let’s unpack this one for a moment. Because, partly what I was doing by leaving my job to try to heal my knees, was establishing “proof of concept.”

Remember: the only doctor I had faith in, while living in Hong Kong, had told me flat out that my knees would never get better. “Never” is a big, final-sounding, devastating word. I’m sure he saw himself as a truth teller, trying to dissuade a naive patient of notions he could still heal.

But I took this as a challenge, because I’m that kind of guy. Could my knees heal under the most optimal conditions – if I quit my job, devoted my life to what I was convinced it would take to get better? If I succeeded, it would show that at least some of those dire verdicts that doctors deliver to patients are unwarranted.

In the end, it was a great feeling of vindication when I realized I was right, and I was going to heal all the way. I felt as if I had won my life back.

But what about you? That’s really what you want to know, even though you’re asking about my knees. Can you heal without quitting your job?

And, my wishy-washy answer is, it probably depends. On how bad your knees are. On what you do at work to try to alleviate the stress of sitting. On your own inner fortitude and will to beat this thing.

I’m not advocating that everyone quit their job to fix their knees. It may work, but it may not. First, I’d try everything possible to heal my knees while staying employed (ahem, especially right now). Then, if you have to confront that hard decision, give it a lot of thought.

I also got this question:

Light flat gradual building up walking is the way to go. My question to Richard is how do you know what’s too much? As long as there is no pain during and after is that ok?

Well, no pain during and immediately after is, I would say, the minimum. But you also have to monitor for delayed onset symptoms, which can pop up a couple of days later. So this can be a very, very frustrating exercise, determining “how much is too much?”

So I would think of starting at a low base. What’s the easiest walking that doesn’t bother your knees at all? Then maybe cut that in half. One of the hardest lessons I learned early on was that my knees were much weaker than I thought, and I had to go more slowly than I expected.

Okay, that’s it for now. Take care everyone, and be careful. I know the warm weather is tempting all of us into going outside, but the world is not a completely safe place yet.

Simple Guidelines for Walking With Bad Knees

I thought I’d do something short on some things that I learned about walking with bad knees. A few simple rules (or since “rules” seems a bit strong, let’s say “guidelines,” with the caveat that this is what worked for me personally).

1. Movement is very, very important, so walking is often a good idea for people trying to recover from knee pain. But if you walk too far, and too fast, your knees will just get worse.

2. In the beginning, when you decide to “walk your knees back to good health,” you will almost invariably walk too much. This is partly because you will have forgotten that you now have a pair of bad knees and that walking can be a very stressful activity for them.

3. Go flat for a while. Choose a walking path that has no inclines, no declines. Avoid steps. That will lessen the impact on your joints.

4. Walking downhill is more dangerous than going uphill. Your body weight tends to drop harder on your vulnerable knee joints. I used to pretend, when going downhill, I was stepping on eggs and trying not to break them.

5. Walking is a great idea! It’s one of those functional knee exercises that’s perfectly suited to something you’ll have to do, again and again, for the rest of your life. Sure, you can do all sorts of odd exercises intended to strengthen your knees, and the muscles around them. But it’s hard to beat walking for something practical that you need to master to be able to live a normal life!