11/23/2023 0 Comments Up down stairs“Having your knees go inward is one of the worst things you can do when going up stairs, so look for shoes that have good arch support and that you can walk around at home in,” says Dr. If the arches of your feet collapse flat when you stand, it pushes your knees inward, which can cause pain and stress in your knees. It’s also important to wear supportive shoes when you climb up and down stairs. “If you push up from your heel, that will shift the work from the front of your knees and quads - which may cause pain - to your glutes, which are stronger muscles,” says Dr. It’s important to put your foot fully on each step as you climb up stairs, so you can push off the step using your heel rather than the ball of your foot. Narrow steps can be especially tricky if you have arthritis because they don’t allow your full foot onto each step. Put your entire foot on the step of the stairs By allocating some of the weight from your legs to the handrail, you take a little bit of pressure off your knees. If your staircase has a handrail, be sure to use it. “When you’re going down the stairs, you want to lead with your weaker leg because you have the advantage of gravity.” 2. “When you’re going up the stairs, you have to shift your entire body weight against gravity, so you want to have the strongest leg ready to transfer all that weight onto,” says Dorsey. As you go back down the stairs, lead with your other leg. When you’re climbing up stairs, lead with your stronger leg (or the one that causes you less knee pain). Go up with your stronger leg, and down with the other Follow these strategies to make navigating stairs easier and less painful. However, there are a few important ways you can make using stairs a little easier on your joints - without forever swearing off stairs. “There are simple ways you can adjust your body mechanics to put a lot less strain on your joints.” “I’ve had a lot of patients who have tried to move to a one-story place just because of their knee pain, so it’s pretty prevalent,” says Deeba Minhas, MD, a rheumatologist at Michigan Medicine in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Knee pain is most likely to first appear during weight-bearing activities that involve bending of the knee, such as climbing stairs. The activity that caused them to cross the threshold from “no pain” to “some pain” most often was going up and down stairs. In a 2014 study published in the journal Arthritis Care & Research, researchers reviewed the pain ratings of nearly 5,000 participants with or at high risk of osteoarthritis when walking, using stairs, in bed, sitting or lying down, and standing up. Knee pain with stair climbing is so common that it can be one of the first clues that someone actually has osteoarthritis in the knee. “That can irritate already inflamed joints.” “Climbing stairs causes more force to go through the leg than walking does,” says occupational therapist Julie Dorsey, OTD, OTR/L, an Associate Professor of Occupational Therapy at Ithaca College in Ithaca, New York. Walking up and down steps causes pain in tender knee joints because of how your weight shifts between your legs as you climb. It may have gotten to the point of your avoiding the stairs altogether - or dreaming of moving to a one-story home. If you live in a multi-story home or walk-up apartment, you know just how painstaking it can be to walk up and down stairs if you have arthritis in your knees.
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