Throbbing Knees:(
 

My knees having been killing me lately. About 3 years ago I started having problem with my left leg and knee but never could figure out the problem. My pain would go away but then flare up whenever it felt like it. Lately I have noticed both of my knees hurt, but my left one hurts the most. My left knee gets swollen and you can hear my knees making weird popping noises. They always hurt going up and stairs and occasionally they will just give out on me. I cannot do my work out tapes b/c its hard on my knees and they always hurt a lot more when I'm done. I read online it said to try swimming or elliptical machine because they are better for your knees, but my real question is this. If I lose weight will the pain stop? I have no health insurance so I can't afford to get tons of x-rays so I'm hoping the pain will just go away. Do you think all this pain could just be from my weight issues or could it be more?

I dont have a good answer for you but I know exactly how you feel. My knees are killing me lately. I am planning on calling my doctor Monday to see if I can get in for x-rays or something soon.

:hug: Sorry I dont have an answer.

I know a lot of pain can definitely be related to weight issues. And just by logical deduction, we bear all of our weight on our knees so it makes sense that you would have problems. You can just wait & see after you lose a good chunk of weight (no pun intended :D ) & if they are still bothering you after that, then I would definitely go see a doctor.

I'm sorry. It really sucks to be in pain. :headache:

The pressure put on your knees with each step you take is 4x the weight you're putting on them; so over 1200 pounds per step for you. Yes, the weight you're carrying could be causing the pain, or at least part of it.

From personal experience, my knees were hurting quite a bit before I changed my diet to eliminate sugar and refined grains, and within a month of making that change nearly all the pain was gone. That was before I had lost any substantial quantity of weight.

Now my knees rarely hurt, and I'm working on building muscular support in my legs to eliminate the pain completely.

Is there a reason why cutting out the sugar and refined grains stopped the pain?

Sugar and refined grains are pro-inflammatory; meaning, they cause inflammation in the body. There are foods that are anti-inflammatory, such as olive oil and avocados and green veggies and fruits and spices also, and this is all the kind of stuff I changed over to eating. So basically my diet went from very full of pro-inflammatory foods to very full of anti-inflammatory foods, and that made a huge difference.

Wow I had no idea that certain food were anti and pro-inflammatory. I'm going to look into this and try to tweak my diet. I hate taking daily pain meds (Advil, Tylenol, etc.) so if I can fix it with food that would be better. Obviously I'm going to continue losing weight too so hopefully with both lifestyle changes my knees will start to feel better. Thanks:)

You're more than welcome, I hope it helps.

I recommend http://www.nutritiondata.com/ if you want to look up the "inflammation factor" of many foods. On the IF, positive numbers are good (meaning anti-inflammatory) and negative numbers are bad (pro-inflammatory). So, for example, a cup of raw spinach has an IF of 78, while a medium serving of McDonald's french fries has an IF of -206 :sp: