I'm going to show you 13 powerful tips to avoid knee replacement surgery. If you have a bone on bone knee joints, be sure to watch the whole video to catch every single tip, because there's probably two or three tips that you can do right now. And the rest of the tips you should take notes on and you can begin to do them real soon as well. So let's get right to it.

 
Tip number one, stop walking for exercise, most healthcare professionals recommend walking for knee joint arthritis and I disagree with this. The reason is because if you have a muscle imbalance, that's putting too much pressure in your knee joint and that muscle imbalance is not fixed first, then when you go to walk, you're going to be using your muscles in an imbalanced way, which is going to create too much pressure because of the way that you're using your muscles during a walking.

 
This is why some people with knee arthritis get more swollen, the more time they're on their feet, they their knee just gets more inflamed and bothered with walking. So you don't need to force your way through walking, you actually should stop walking, if this is happening to you.

 
Tip number two is to begin using a cane or a walker when you do have to walk for many people suffering with knee joint arthritis, they're putting too much pressure on the knee joint. And using something like this a cane or a walker can take tremendous amount of pressure off the knee joints without having to fix the muscle imbalance just yet.

 
A cane like this when walking can take from 20 to 10% off of your body weight depending on how much you lean on it when you walk. And using a walker like this one can take 50% off of your body weight or more when walking so that you're not irritating your knee joints, when you do have to walk. Using a walker like this one or a cane like this one is the quickest way to take pressure off your knee joint.

 
But many people don't want to use these devices because they'll feel old using them or they're afraid of what other people would think if they begin to use a cane or a walker. But I say to those people come on, if it helps you avoid a near replacement surgery, you've got to start doing it.

 
Who cares what other people think or how you're going to look, you don't want to have to have a knee replacement surgery by just putting extra pressure on your knee joint, take that pressure off, get a cane, get a walker and start relieving the pressure on your knee joint.

 
And as long as you're getting stronger in the right muscles to fix your imbalances, you should be able to wean yourself off a cane and wean yourself off a walker and get back to walking normally, again, that just a side note, this Walker is an upright Walker where you rest your elbows, there are other versions of walkers where you grab them with your hands, you don't rest your elbows, there's all different kinds of walkers and canes out there.

 
Tip number three is to place little importance on your X ray or your MRI. Now, if you've been told the F bone on bone knee joint arthritis, you've probably had an x ray, possibly an MRI or a CT scan, but likely an x ray. And the doctor showed you your X ray and said, Here's where your knee joint is bone on bone.
Look, there should be space right here between the bones. That's the joint space, it's decreased on this side. And they may even have done your other side. And it showed the same thing. Or maybe it's a little bit better. What you have to realize is an x ray, a CT scan and MRI are just pictures of the inside of your body.

 
Think of pictures like you would take a picture with your phone or with your camera, you might be making a funny face or maybe you got caught without your makeup on or whatever it is true though how you ever you fix yourself up in the day. And it wasn't the greatest look of you or wasn't the best angle of yourself just like you might get sick.

 
You don't want to have pictures taken of you when you're sick. Because that's not your best presentation. Your knee joint might not have been x rayed in the best angle it may have. It may be a little bit sick right now. But you can make it better. What you see in your X ray MRI or CT scan is hardly ever permanent. And it's very likely that your knee joint has the ability the potential to improve from its current situation.

 
As long as you do the right things for it, you can probably improve enough to avoid having a knee replacement surgery. So don't worry about your X ray or MRI right now, even though your doctor might be placing lots of emphasis on it. But you should be especially skeptical of your doctor's diagnosis of your bone on bone knee joint situation.

 
Because if that's all they did, if all they did was do some imaging for your knee, they never touched you. They never measured your range of motion. They never looked at the way the muscles are balanced around the joints. And then ever took into consideration all the facets of how your knees behaving like how much time you can stand on your feet.

 
How much How about how well you're sleeping at night because if the pain is bad at nights, then that's an indication that it might be more severe. But also if you cannot straighten your knee or bend your knee very well then that might be a more severe situation. But what we find very often is people can bend and straighten their knee quite a bit.

 
Maybe they have a little bit of limitations and they can actually be on their feet a decent Now before their knee starts to hurt or swell, if that's your situation, your potential for improving your knee joints, even if it's been bone on bone as diagnosed by your X ray or your doctor, you can probably improve enough and never have to have a knee replacement surgery and get your knee back to feeling normal again, for the long term.

 
So don't worry about your bone on bone knee joint arthritis that your doctor gave you based on your X ray without having checked anything else. Take it with a huge grain of salt. Tip number four stick to light stretching versus aggressive stretching. People suffering from bone on bone knee joint arthritis typically have some limitation in their range of motion and their ability to bend and straighten out their knee joints.

 
So the logical thing that people think and healthcare professionals will also recommend is to stretch that knee joint so that you can make it as equal as the other side or, or has to move it as far as it will go in either direction. This is generally good advice if you have limitations. And if you're in the earlier stages or phases of knee arthritis.

 
But I need to warn you that aggressively stretching tends to make things worse, you have to keep it on the lighter side. And the reason for that is if you aggressively stretching knee joints, you add more compression to the surfaces inside the knee joint and the joint lining as well. The cartilage actually gets pressed on itself. And that can make the inflammation in your joints worse.

 
It's called arthritis because our Earth in Latin means joints. And itis means inflammation. So there's already joint inflammation going on. And if you compress it further, you're just irritating it more just like if you had it injury on your hand here like a skin injury, and you press it, it's going to inflame it and make it worse.

 
Now in addition to compressing the knee joint, you might actually be setting a reflex off in your muscles if you're stretching very aggressively. If you feel a big muscle stretch, there's something called the stretch reflex, you can look this up on the internet, the stretch reflex causes the muscle that you're stretching to begin to contract or tighten up, which actually makes it tighter in the long run.

 
So you want to avoid stretching so hard that you get the stretch reflex happening. So to keep your stretch like think of a zero to 10 scale, zero being nothing at all, you feel no stretch and 10 being the most intense stretch you've ever felt in your life. Don't do anything past a three on that zero to 10 scale.

 
Another way of thinking of it is a mild stretch, a moderate stretch and an intense stretch, you want to stick to the mild intensity of stretch don't go into moderate or intense stick to the mild intensity.

 
Tip number five is stretch for less time. But more frequently, most people even healthcare providers really aren't aware of the research that's available around stretching, we know that holding a stretch for 60 seconds or more really is not that much more beneficial.

 
You get what's called diminishing returns. So the sweet spot for stretching is somewhere between 30 and 60 seconds, once you go beyond 60 seconds, then you might set off that stretch reflex you're over compressing the knee joint, it's just not the best situation to be in, you're going to get the most benefit out of stretching, if you hang out in that 30 to 60 range each time you stretch.

 
So in order to maximize your knee joint flexibility, you really only need to stretch for just a few minutes, I recommend my clients stretch from just three to five minutes each time they do it holding each stretch for 30 to 60 seconds, you won't gain a whole lot of motion during this time. But that's okay.

 
The way that you do accumulate more motion is by stretching frequently throughout the day. For patients that truly do have stiffness in their knee and losses of motion, we recommend that they stretch up to hourly 30 seconds to 60 seconds each time three to five times. And they need to continue this throughout the day to maximize the benefits from stretching.

 
Now of course you don't need to wake up in the middle of the night to stretch. And once you've gone through about two days of stretching and you're not making much more improvements, then you're probably done stretching. This goes for you even if your knee joint has not fully achieved its complete range of motion, you might have what's called a new normal range of motion, which means that you might just be permanently stiff based on the severity of your knee arthritis.

 
And as long as it's a manageable amount, you can probably still get away with not having knee surgery. And as long as it's a manageable amount of motion that you still have. You can probably get away with never having knee replacement surgery even though your knee has lost a little bit of motion permanently.

 
Tip number six is to try this foot twisting exercise out sit somewhere where your knee is bent about 90 degrees. And then you're just going to twist your foot inwards and outwards 30 times 1234 Count each movement as a rep, and go to 30. And you're trying to really get your foot all the way outwards each time you take it and all the way inwards as long as it doesn't hurt to do this.

 
When thinking about more mobility for your knee joints, this easy exercise could free up some missing motion of the knee. Most people don't realize that the knee joint actually has some twisting ability in it, they usually just think of straightening out the knee and bending the knee.

 
But because there is some joint player some freedom of motion in rotation, if you take advantage of this rotation exercise, you might free up some extra motion when straightening out and bending your knee joints. Try doing 30 reps every one to two hours for three days to test if this helps out your knee joints.

 
If it does help out, this might be something that you need to be doing more regularly to improve your knee joint health. Tip number seven is to tailgate swing as often as possible. This is a tailgate swing, you're just easily swinging your legs back and forth, like you're sitting on the back of a truck on the tailgate and just hanging out talking with friends.

 
This super easy exercise is extremely beneficial, you're doing so much good. There's fluid inside your knee joints, it's called synovial fluid, it's the joint fluid that circulates within your joints. The only way that you can create circulation for that is by moving your joints. It's not connected to our heart and circulatory system. So your heart doesn't really have a strong effect on moving the fluid inside.

 
But you need to get some movement in there in order to move the fluid. And it's important to move the fluid because that joint fluid that synovial fluid carries important nutrients that help to heal the cartilage inside your knee joints. Do this for five minutes at a time if you can. If you want to go longer, even better, you can swing harder if you like you can swing both legs at the same time or alternate, it doesn't matter just get some easy, unweighted motion going through your knee joints to help it out right now.

 
Tip number eight is to massage your thigh muscles on the front of your thigh. These muscles are often tight, they often get little knots or tender spots throughout the muscle. And that's because this muscle tends to be overused. When it comes to people that have knee joint arthritis. There's tons of easy ways to do this. And there's huge benefit in doing this, you can get immediate relief in your knee joint because you're taking pressure off the knee joint.

 
By freeing up the tightness in the muscle on the front here, the most effective way we found out is by using one of these massage guns, you would turn the device on it starts to move real fast and just easily push this through your thigh muscle, finding the tender spots and working them out. You can increase the intensity as you can tolerate it.

 
And the point here is to make sure that those tender spots once you find one hanging out hanging out on it freed up pounded free get it to loosen up. Now you don't have to get a massage going like this.

 
But of course these are pretty nifty and handy. You can use a roller ball like this one, this has got a metal ball, you can freeze this, and so it's cold as well as compressive. And you can just work out or not this way, move it in different directions. And there's also massage sticks like this.

 
These are kind of like a rolling pin style. And you can work out the tightness in your thigh muscles. And it might even go all the way up into the hip area this way. And you can use a very cheap tennis ball as well just to roll it out. And you want to go even cheaper.

 
How about your hand just freed up like that you can use your fist, your thumb your fingers like this, it doesn't matter just get those knots free and loose anywhere from one to five minutes or more. If you can tolerate it and feel like you can do it will help to free up the motion in your thigh muscle which decompresses your knee joints.

 
Tip number nine is to drink more water. This is a hugely underrated tip I can't stress enough. Most people don't drink enough water, you should look to consume about 100 ounces or about three liters of water per day.

 
Tip number 10 is taking joint supplements joint supplements like glucosamine, chondroitin, collagen, MSM, there's so many out there and generally they're all helpful for you as long as you don't have any reactions to them. Tumeric is another one. It's not really a joint supplement others MSM, they're anti inflammatory supplements that can help with bringing down the inflammation inside your knee joints.

 
And just a quick side notes using supplements is you really need to give them a good two months of taking them consistently, just as the directions say on the supplements because the supplements need to build up in your body in your system in order to be able to affect the knee joints.

 
You can't just take these for a few days or even a few weeks and then judge their effectiveness. You really have to go out and purchase two months worth to give it a good go and make sure that you can tell that they're working or not for you.

 
Tip number 11 is to stop strengthening your quad muscles. This goes back to the muscle unbalance that I've been talking about little by little, and why I would want you to free up your thigh muscles because it gets so tight.

 
When your quad muscles, the muscles that are right here on the front of your thigh get stronger and stronger, they compress the knee joint more and more, these muscles go into the kneecap and attached to the shin bone. And so when they get tighter, they pull the joint together and can create a ton of compression to the knee joint.

 
And it's that excessive compression over time that ends up irritating the lining of the joints wearing away the cartilage and creating a bone on bone knee joint situation. And this is not common knowledge, I'm probably saying something that you've never heard of and your doctor might not even have heard of, they will often recommend that you strengthen these quad muscles.

 
Because these muscles have a direct connection to the knee joints, they logically assume that strengthening them is a good thing and that it makes knee arthritis better. But it actually makes it worse because it adds that extra compression to the knee joints.

 
Now some people do tell me Well I'm weak all over my legs. My quads are also weak, I've just kind of a weak person. And what I say to this is you might still have over dominant quads meaning that even if you're weak all over your body, your quads relatively to the your other muscles in your hip and thigh, your quads might be the strongest muscle of all your weak muscles.

 
Which makes it the dominant stronger muscle and going to go strengthen this muscle is probably going to make your situation worse, you don't want to be doing that stop strengthening your quads stopped doing leg extension exercises stopped doing leg press exercises.

 
Stop doing any exercise where you feel the front of your thighs here working quite a bit during the exercise, because that is likely going to cause that extra inflammation in your knee joint over time. Tip number 12 is to stop strengthening your hamstring muscles on the back of your thigh.

 
These muscles cross the knee joint and attach to the shin bone. And they can also compress the knee joints and irritate the lining of the cartilage surfaces inside the knee joints. This is the second most commonly overused muscle in addition to the quads, and they directly can impact the compression in the knee joints.

 
So getting stronger thigh muscles on the front and getting stronger thigh muscles on the back just sets people up for worse knee arthritis situations as time goes on. And this is something you can you should avoid, even though your healthcare providers might be telling you to strengthen them.

 
So then you might ask the question, well, what the heck do I strengthen in order to make my knee better this takes me to number 13 is to get your butt muscles or your glutes stronger. The glute muscles are nearly always the weakest link when it comes to treating a knee arthritis problem. Getting stronger in the glutes tends to balance out the forces on the knee joint.

 
And the reason for it is because the glutes can directly affect the knee joint even though the glute muscles don't attach to the knee joint directly, they influence the position of the thigh bone, the glutes can cause the hip to rotate like this, which ends up rotating the knee joints. And that changes the pressures dramatically at the knee joint.

 
So if you can control your knee better with your glute muscles by getting stronger glutes, then the quads and the hamstrings in the back can begin to behave more normally. And you can get balanced in your knee joints. This is often neglected in physical therapy clinics, by trainers by the health care profession as a whole.

 
The way that you know that you're strengthening your glute muscles is that you can feel your glute muscles tightening up or working when you're going to go exercise them. If you're trying to do a glute exercise, I use air quotes because people do glute exercises but don't feel their glutes working, then you're not doing a glute exercise even if that was your intent.

 
Or maybe you saw that machine and it has the picture of the person that shows the glute muscles are colored because you're supposed to be targeting the glute muscles on that machine, whether it's an elliptical or a weight machine of some sort. If you don't feel your glute muscles work in there, it's not working your glutes, you need to make your glute muscles work and you need to make them work without tightening up your thigh muscles.

 
There's tons of exercises out there. Let me show you a quick one. Just to start off with right now go sit down wherever you're at. And just think about tightening up your butt muscles. If you also tighten up your thigh muscles on the front of your hip and thigh right here, or the back of your thigh back here.

 
Then you need to start from scratch and you start from step one, you need to learn how to tighten up your butt muscles. I'm doing it right now without tightening up your thigh muscles because if you can't do that, then you're not going to work yourself into the proper balance. You're going to be strengthening your thigh muscles when you're trying to strengthen your glutes and you're going to throw the balance off even worse.

 
Start by holding 10 to 20 seconds just in seated like this. If you want to try it in standing, think about squeezing your glute muscles. Hold it from 10 to 20 seconds Avoid tightening the thigh muscles on the front or the back of the thigh. We've got tons of videos on our channel here for strengthening the glute muscles without using your thigh muscles, you can go check them out in the description below.

 
Now I've got a bonus tip for you secret tip number 14 is to get professional help from the right person. And this is usually going to be a physical therapist, but you got to watch out even then because if you're looking to avoid getting a knee replacement surgery, then you've got to find the right clinic.

 
Most physical therapy clinics help people after they've had surgery like knee replacement surgeries, or other types of surgeries, back surgeries, hip, neck, shoulder surgeries. If you go into a clinic, and you find that most people there have had surgery, they're there to rehabilitate after having a recent surgery, then you can guess pretty well that that clinic specializes in helping people right after surgery, which means that they're not probably going to specialize in helping you avoid a surgery it is a different specialty.

 
So you have to do some research to find out which clinic is the best fit for you. And if you're having a lot of trouble, which you can do. In the meantime, we've got a program that we offer here online it's called the knee arthritis recovery program. It's a comprehensive online program 100% online and on demand so you can watch it anytime you want. from any mobile device you can watch videos from and that you have an internet connection to.

 
This program is me on video guiding you through every single step that you should be going through to take your knee arthritis into a better healthy situation. It is designed for people that are looking to avoid getting a knee replacement surgery. You can learn all about it in the link in the description below. Hey, thanks for watching this video.

 
If you have any questions drop a comment below and don't forget to give us a thumbs up. Give us a like please and I'll catch you in the next video.

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