The 10-Year Anniversary of 'Saving My Knees'!

I'm actually a bit late on this but:

January was the 10-year publication anniversary of "Saving My Knees," my account of beating chronic knee pain. That whole unhappy time feels so distant now, like a long-ago bad dream that I've finally managed to shake off.

Today, for example, I went on a 64-mile bike ride ... a hard 64-mile bike ride. I felt fine during the ride, and I feel fine now afterwards. No Advil. No ice packs. No anything (well, my quads did grumble this afternoon when I walked down the stairs from the second floor).

I realized that, even if my knees fell apart tomorrow (which I very much doubt), I will have had 10 great years that my old orthopedic doctors would never have guessed lay in my future. What's more, my knees have gotten stronger over the years.

For example, in the several years following the publication of the book, I did have some minor issues from time to time. Sometimes I would have a little burning sensation around the kneecaps, the same as when I was suffering from chronic knee pain. These episodes would be rare, and last only a few weeks, but I took the symptoms very seriously.

But in the last several years -- maybe even four? or five? -- I haven't had that burning sensation at all. In the future, I realize, it may come back. But for now, I take this as a sign that my knees have healed, and adapted to the intense stresses I regularly put on them.

Over the winter, for instance, I rode my bike indoors, in the basement, in virtual worlds created by Zwift. I rode with groups that were stronger than me; I would spend three hours, without stopping, pedaling like mad to stay with the "B" group. Sometimes I averaged about 230 watts over that period.

And ... the knees were fine, even though I pushed them harder than I probably should have.

Ten years after publishing the book, I've gotten smarter about a few things. For one, my story doesn't resonate with everyone (in the latest foreword to the book, I even tried to scare off people who I didn't think would care for it very much).

But I think the message is a powerful one. I don't pretend at all that it originated with me; Dr. Scott Dye and Doug Kelsey figured this out first, and I took liberally from Kelsey when trying to put together a program to heal.

In the book, I just wanted to tell my own story, hoping it would inspire others and, most of all, give them optimism. I suppose I took a chance; what if I had published the book and my knees had fallen apart two years later? I would've felt like a fraud.

Instead, everything worked out great for me, and I'm certainly grateful. If you have knee pain, you can beat it. Remember that. You can beat it. I did. And if you look for "success story" on the search bar for this blog, you'll find plenty of other people who did too. 

Of Magic Pills and Surgery

A brief post today about magic pills and surgery.

I saw this yesterday:

When it comes to battling with joint pain in a natural way, certain remedies like the use of methylsulfonylmethane (MSM) may be helpful.

That word is certainly an impressive concatenation of chemical prefixes, and gave me flashbacks to high school chemistry. I will add that I know nothing about methylsulfonylmethane.

(I have written extensively about glucosamine and chondroitin, which rigorous scientific studies have turned against as solutions to knee pain. They are most likely placebos, it appears.)

So why am I down on something that I know nothing about?

It's more like this: we want things to be easy. Take a pill. Or schedule a surgery. And whatever ails us is fixed.

Essentially, you hand over control of your knee pain to a surgeon, or to the researchers who came up with the formulation for the pill.

But I don't think it usually works out well with knee pain. My experience is that YOU have to get involved with YOUR knee pain. You can't outsource the problem to some nutraceutical company, or orthopedic surgeon.

You have to focus on beneficial movement, monitor symptoms closely, and not lose sight of the end goal, day after day after day.

But you may be thinking: What's wrong with taking a pill? Maybe it will help.

Maybe. But it may also lull you into thinking that you can be less vigilant in your own efforts to fix the problem.

Anyway, for the record, I took a number of different joint pills. I don't think any of them helped in the least. I also followed a strict program of movement that gradually increased in intensity, and that worked.

That's how I think knee pain suffers get better, not by popping something out of a bottle. (Note: there are times of course when surgery makes sense, but there are far too many knee surgeries for problems that can't easily be fixed by that kind of intervention.)