When You're in Pain, It's Good to Try to Figure Out What's Wrong

Seems obvious, right?

I mean, who would dispute that?

I was thinking about this recently though because of my mother. She told me she has plantar fasciitis.

Now I don't know much about plantar fasciitis. But I do half-remember a post that Doug Kelsey, whom I respect very much, wrote about the problem.

I tried finding his post -- unsuccessfully, sadly. I wanted to send it to my mother. Because right now she's in that early stage of: I have this condition. It hurts. What do I do?

I caution that I'm imperfectly remembering what Doug wrote, but I recall the part that resonated with me went something like this:

People often do the wrong thing to recover from plantar fasciitis. They do the wrong thing because they don't understand what it is. It's actually a slight tear in the ligament near the ball of the foot. Some people recommend stretching, but this doesn't make sense. Why are you stretching a torn ligament? You need to let it heal, then slowly strengthen it.

Anyway, I wish I could find that post, because that really struck me as very logical, even though plenty of people don't do it. In fact, my sister-in-law had plantar fasciitis. She's a personal trainer, and she loves to stretch. So what did she do? It felt tight, so she stretched. I guess eventually it healed, but probably not thanks to the stretching.

What does all this have to do with bad knees?

Chronic knee pain can be a maddening puzzle. Early on though, I think it's good to try to figure out what exactly is going on in the joint. The most sensible treatment for your knee pain will differ, depending on what's wrong.

In the end, if there is no clear cause -- if you basically get a shrug from your doctor(s) -- then I would think about adopting the high-repetition, low-load method of trying to heal slowly, but steadily. That's what worked for me. And that's at the heart of other success stories you'll find on this blog.