Just as knee  pain can be caused by uneven muscular tension near the knee, so too can it be caused by muscular tensions in the hip, lower back and feet. This can be particularly deceiving when the feet, hip or lower back are not actually in any pain.

This occurs via the compensation effect, unconsciously your body in it’s attempt to maintain balance and avoid pain changes it’s posture as a reaction to other things going on in your body.

This can happen in a variety of ways, perhaps a past ankle injury that is no longer  painful causes you to develop a change to your stride when you walk, creating added pressure on the soft tissue in your knee. This compensation may occur on either side of your body, from your hip to your toe.

Changes in your work and home activities can change your posture in subtle ways that you may not notice immediately. You may not think you are moving differently to how you always have, but the body seems to remember what happens to it even if “you” cannot. This may result from a change in how you move, sit, stand and even react to stress.

I have known people over the years who have actually had such persistent knee pain and stiffness. Then they have had exploratory arthroscopic surgery that has revealed no likely cause for the discomfort at all. Their knee pain turned out to be of a muscular cause which an arthroscopy is unlike to detect.

A collapsed left foot arch for instance can make your right knee sore because of changed weight displacement.

Golf places unnatural sideway stresses on the knee joint that can progressively damage cartilage and ligaments, good playing techniques help but if you want to keep playing regular therapy and exercise are necessary.

Swimming and aquarobics are good ways to supplement a lack of walking, running or cycling. Doing extra upper body work with weights can burn off some of those spare callories too. If normal weight bearing exercise hurts your knee your whole body will suffer if you give up on exercise.

If your knee cartilage is worn down and you have been informed that you have osteoartritis (OA) nothing will restore the lost cartilage but it will not necessarily become a cause of constant knee pain. Cartilage wears down slowly, from day to day it does not change much.

If your OA affected knee was sore last week but not sore this week it is not because you have grown more cartilage this week, it means there were other factors at work. Stiff muscles can be just the sort of transient factor that can account for intermittent knee pain because muscular tensions change much faster.

Too often people give up on a knee that they are told is incurable, by definition OA has no cure that can make it like new again. Your knee’s symptoms can be managed though and by keeping the muscles supple in your legs. Self Massage and stretching can help your knees stay better for longer.