Dear LPG,

It’s that time of year again when your joints remind you that they are still there even if they don’t bother you most of the year.

I am guessing that I am not the only older person who is feeling more pain in my knees than I do at any other time of the year.  If you are like me, you have the pain most of the time now and it gets worse throughout the winter months but it always seems to be there really.  It might be that you did a lot of exercise back in the day which has come back to haunt you but I think that there are two ways to go if it is all too much and, if the thought of knee replacement is as frightening to you as it is to me, it might be that you have decided that you will learn to live with the pain. 

But however bad it seems there is a worse option for most people and that is to avoid using the bad knee as much as possible.  I have watched two of my friend’s work through the aftereffects of knee replacement operations and the first thing that struck me is that, in both cases, the hospital staff made sure that they were up and walking on that knee, as early as the day after the actual operation.  I have to admit that that, and the pain that I saw those two people go through, are the variables which put me off the whole idea of ever going down that road, even if my doctor ever mentions it. 

I know that not doing anything is not an option and the medication that I have been offered so far does not appear to be doing much to help.  I have also tried many over-the-counter remedies in addition, having checked with my doctor that they will not make things worse and I do keep walking but I wondered if there was anything else I could do to help myself. 

I followed in the footsteps of so many of the writers of articles I have read on the LPG website and took a look on YouTube and I found a few exercises and recommendations that might help.  I have tried a few of the exercises and I am sure that they have done me a little good although, as I do when it comes to additional medication I have also asked my doctor if he thinks that such exercise will do any more harm to my personal knee problem, and though there are too many to do all the time, I have found a few which I think are making a bit of a difference.

I hope that LPG will leave links to some of them below so that other readers might mention the ones they think might help to their doctors and have a go…

JL, Bromley.

The videos below show exercises which may well be helpful but LPG would just emphasise again the importance of checking with your GP before embarking on any course of exercise …

JL shares some of the exercises she is referring to…

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… and LPG found some courses of action that are not recommended…

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