Why to Be Optimistic About Recovering from Knee Pain

Right now I can't ride my bike. I'm frustrated.

But all this has absolutely 0% to do with my knees. Rather, the weak link in the biomechanical chain for the past month has been a sore left foot. Why is it hurting? I don't know. Part of me thinks that it's the dreaded PF: plantar fasciitis.

Of course because exercising becomes addictive, I was slow to walk away from the bike and my active lifestyle (sound familiar? welcome to how Type A people deal with sports injuries). I don't have easy access to a pool (and am a poor swimmer), so I'm casting about for some other cardio activities. I am toying with the idea of buying a rowing machine.

Anyway ...

That's just a quick update of me, and where I'm at currently: great knees, lousy left foot. During this self-imposed period of being on the sidelines, I've had more time to reflect. I don't contribute much to this blog anymore, but then I see a little spurt of book sales (kind of amazing that the book still sells, even in modest numbers), and I think of the "knee journey."

I know occasionally I post about it, the Big Picture Overview, for people who may have just stumbled onto this blog. I know how they feel, and how they're struggling with trying to digest so much advice, some of it conflicting. I know that in a fresh way too (with my left foot, I'm seeing "walking barefoot is good" and at the same time "don't walk barefoot," e.g.).

Today I just want to talk about one uplifting, inspiring part of my journey: realizing that the old doc's line that "bad knees can't heal; they'll just get worse and wear out over time" was a load of crap.

The thing is, the more I thought about it, the less sense it made. Our bodies are designed to heal. Even brains adapt after horrible traumatic brain injuries. How can a knee joint -- a joint that has evolved to take a lot of pounding force, day after day -- not have any capacity to improve?

But what happens is bad knees have a much smaller "envelope of function." They can't tolerate as much stress. So when you subject them to the normal forces that normal knees can withstand, yes, they do get worse. And yes, if you continue to do that, you won't get better.

The first problem is, most of us are great at digging holes, and not the good kind. We feel twinges of pain and we think, "Oh, I'll exercise through it" or "It'll go away soon." We don't try to modify whatever behavior is contributing to that pain for a while, and sometimes a long while. We dig a giant hole for ourselves, where we unhappily find ourselves at some later time, desperate for the solution to our nagging knee pain.

It can require radical changes to get your knees back within that "envelope of function" that will allow healing to begin, very slowly. Most people, I'm now convinced, lack the patience and determination and sheer willpower to heal their bad knees.

But even before you set out on the journey, you have to start with that little seed of optimism: that it's possible. I did it. Someone who posts here under the name "Knee Pain," she did it. And "TriAgain," who also posts here, he did it. I have more respect for these people than for myself, and my journey, because theirs took longer and seemed to me to be more difficult.

But it all starts with a simple premise: bad knees can get better. You have to believe that. I did, not because I'm some kind of starry-eyed optimist, but because the rational part of my brain told me that this was the only viewpoint that really made sense.