What Relieves Arthritis Pain in Knees? Practical Tips for Managing Knee Pain From Arthritis
Many people are told their knee pain is because of “wear and tear” or “bone on bone” arthritis and that pain relief comes from rest, injections, or surgery.
For many of the active adults I work with in Bend, OR, the terms used to describe arthritis invoke fear and folks often express frustration that treatment options leave them without a clear path back to the activities they love like hiking, skiing, gardening, or pickleball.
Here’s the thing: your X-ray and your diagnosis are only one part of the story.
If you’re looking for what relieves arthritis pain in knees, the answer is a bit more nuanced.
Your injury history, the impact of pain on your life, your ability to continue to participate in things that bring meaning and purpose are all an important part of your recovery process.
The end goal is not that we “fix” the arthritis in your knees, but that we work with your body, building strength and capacity so you can get back to the things that bring you joy.
What is knee arthritis and why does it hurt so much?
Arthritis in the knee typically occurs when there’s long-standing inflammation, decreased space between the bones that make up the knees, which is where the phrase “bone on bone” comes from, and very often pain that can result in a decrease in functional ability.
While an image, like an X-ray, can give us some information about the bony alignment and joint space, it doesn’t always explain the pain people experience and is only one piece of the clinical puzzle. What’s most important is what you experience and the impact your pain has on your function.
Many people with arthritis pain in their knees notice a combination of swelling, stiffness, weakness, and a gradual loss of confidence with everyday movements. This might show up as difficulty walking on uneven ground, hiking trails you used to enjoy, going up or down stairs, or getting on and off the floor.
Often, people can still get out for a day of skiing, hiking, or pickleball, but notice swelling, soreness, or stiffness a few hours later or even into the next day. This delayed response can feel confusing and discouraging, especially when you’re trying to stay active and do “all the right things.”
While it’s frustrating to feel sidelined by knee pain from arthritis, pain itself is a protective messenger. It doesn’t automatically mean you’ve caused damage.
Finding the right balance of activity is often a process of curiosity and adjustment rather than strict rules. That process is worth the effort in the end as it’s what allows many people to stay in the garden, on the trails, on the snow, or on the court while minimizing flare-ups.
What relieves arthritis pain in knees?
When it comes to treatment, the process is multifactorial and individualized to you and your needs.
Some of the key things we focus on:
Movement that supports your knee including range of motion, strength, balance, stability, pacing, and gradual return to activity. These are all integrated with intention so that you can stop second-guessing what’s safe enough for your knee while you’re experiencing pain.
Calming the nervous system. Very often our nervous system processes pain as a threat. Using simple practices that support your nervous system allows you to shift out of the threat state into a restore-and-recovery state.
Reducing knee strain in daily life through external supports like footwear, trekking poles, and activity modifications so you can stay active while relieving your arthritis pain.
The process isn’t perfect and very often we have to treat it like an experiment. We collaborate to identify an exercise or activity you want to try, check in to see how your knee responded, then work together to adjust, continue as is, or progress the activity based on the response of your knee.
It’s a very individualized process that’s facilitated through a supportive treatment process with shared decision-making.
Movement that supports your knees
When you’re experiencing arthritic knee pain, you might notice stiffness and decreased range of motion, weakness with daily activities like going up and down stairs or getting on and off the floor, or not feeling as stable on your feet as you once did.
It’s important to remember that you are more than your knee. You are a whole-person and your injury story, beliefs, fears, and goals are all important in your recovery process.
Some supportive movements we incorporate in holistic physical therapy treatment include:
Range of motion to restore limitations in the knee, hip, foot, and ankle. Our joints love motion, it’s like lotion for the joint and we can increase work on increasing range of motion through gentle exercises, biking, or pool exercises.
Strengthening exercises to increase functional strength of the muscles in your lower leg and core. This is especially important if you’ve been noticing more challenges getting up and down from a chair, the floor, or going up and down stairs. The more strength you have, the more independence you retain and the easier daily activities will feel.
Balance and stability to promote increased awareness of where your body is in space allowing you to respond to uneven surfaces and direction changes with more ease.
Activity adjustments to keep you as active as possible while minimizing flare-ups. This isn’t about giving up. It’s about meeting your body where it’s at and continuing to find ways to move that feel good for your knee. Some common activities adjustments include water walking instead of walking on pavement, cycling instead of running, modifications to a strengthening program that allow consistency instead of all-or-nothing.
Because no two knees are the same, movement interventions should be adapted to provide the best support for you and progress based on your individual needs, not rigid exercise rules or protocols.
Calming the nervous system when pain is persistent
Pain is a protective response to keep you safe.
When you experience pain, it’s like an alarm going off to get your attention and to change what you’re doing. Most of the time what happens is you make a change, the threat goes away, the alarm turns off, and your pain goes away.
For some people, pain persists beyond the expected timeline for tissue healing. It might come and go without a clear reason, it might move around to different parts of your body, you might notice an increase in sensitivity to touch, or you might even notice fatigue or brain fog.
When this happens, it’s not that your body has failed to heal. What is likely happening is that your nervous system has become hypersensitive.
In chronic pain treatment, we incorporate nervous system support practices including:
Breathwork to help shift your nervous system out of a fight-or-flight state and into restore-and-recovery state. When your nervous system is on high alert, it’s more likely that you’ll experience pain. Supporting your restore-and-recovery state not only helps with healing, but often allows you to do more during your day with less or no pain flare-ups.
Body scans to increase your mind-body awareness and ability to notice sensations in your body. While practicing a body scan, people with chronic pain often notice that there are many parts of their body that feel neutral or good. This awareness can help shift your brain from the hyperfixation on your painful knee and shift attention to those parts of your body that are not painful.
Self-massage and mobility exercises are useful to help soften the protective bracing, tension, or tightness patterns you might be holding around your knee allowing you to move throughout your day-to-day activities with more ease.
For many people, these nervous system support practices give them permission to stop trying to “fix” or eliminate their pain and begin to trust their body again.
Reducing knee strain in daily life
Many active adults in Bend notice knee pain during daily life and especially with the activities like hiking, skiing, gardening, and pickleball.
Finding adjustments that support your knees while allowing you to still get out on the trails, snow, or courts is an important part of holistic physical therapy.
Some strategies we can implement to reduce strain on your knees include:
Footwear - ensuring you have well-fitting shoes that feel comfortable and supportive for your feet, knees, and hips.
Trekking poles - it’s not cheating to use trekking poles! They are a fabulous tool to give your body more support and reduce strain on your hips, knees, ankles, and feet while you’re out on the trails.
Activity pacing and intentional breaks - when you’re out on the trail or in the garden it’s easy to lose track of time and end up doing more activity than you intended. The downside to this is that it can lead to a flare-up. I often recommend setting a timer to remind you to take a break before you notice any irritability in your knees.
Gradual return to activity - healing isn’t linear, but we can work together to find the sweet spot of activity for you. People often find this requires a mindset of curiosity and experimentation to figure out how much activity you can do without a flare-up and with good recovery as you work your way back to time on the trails, court, or in the garden.
Why holistic physical therapy matters for knee arthritis
When it comes to treatment for knee arthritis, it’s important to look beyond your knee and pain as the only metrics of progress because they don’t provide the full picture of you and what’s important to you.
Holistic physical therapy matters because it changes how your care is tailored, shifting the focus from just managing symptoms to supporting your whole system so progress actually fits your life.
Treatment integrates multiple layers of support, recognizing that pain is influenced by more than just joints and muscles:
Nervous system tools to support your body’s innate healing abilities decrease the threat pain poses to your nervous system.
Beliefs exploration as it relates to your body’s ability to heal and the impact of your past injury and pain experiences on the way you’re experiencing the arthritis pain in your knees. When we understand your unique history, we can better tailor your treatment to your needs so you leave each session feeling seen and understood.
Stress management as higher life stress can impact how well you tolerate activity progressions.
Sleep hygiene because restful sleep is an essential part of your health, healing, and recovery process.
Understanding your life context, what’s important to you, and the impact of your knee pain on your work, social engagement, activities, and relationships. This serves as a guide for the focus of your treatment sessions and planning.
For the active adults in Bend, OR that I work with, some of the common patterns I see are:
Seasonal flares - as folks jump into a new activity season be it skiing, running, or gardening, they’re often stressing their body in ways they have not been over the last several months. This new load on their body can lead to pain flare-ups.
Overtraining - the outdoor activities in Central Oregon are unlimited and accessible year-round, which lends itself to consistent activity participation, but can also lead to overtraining when folks do not intentionally schedule lighter training or activity weeks throughout the year.
Fear of movement - for folks who have experienced persistent pain, pain itself becomes a threat and folks become fearful of movement. Over time, this can lead to a smaller and smaller movement vocabulary that takes intentional support at a pace that feels safe-enough to re-build.
When knee arthritis becomes chronic pain
When knee arthritis pain lasts longer than expected, beyond the typical healing time for an injury, it may shift into what we call chronic pain.
This doesn’t mean your knee has irreversible damage or is beyond help. It means your nervous system may be staying in a protective mode longer than necessary.
Chronic pain treatment focuses on supporting both your body and nervous system so you can gradually return to meaningful activity with more confidence and fewer flare-ups.
Small steps you can try this week
If you’re looking for a few actionable steps to take to help relieve arthritis pain in your knees, you might experiment with one or more of the following:
Change how you move - By shifting out of the all-or-nothing mindset, you can ask yourself “what feels supportive right now?” It might be going on a few shorter walks throughout your day instead of one long walk, slowing your pace, or choosing flatter, more even terrain for a few days.
Check in with your knees before and after movement - Do a quick body scan before movement to notice what sensations are present in your knees and throughout your body. Can you notice temperature, tension, softness, guarding, neutral sensations? After activity, do another check-in. What changed? What stayed the same? What, perhaps, feels worse? It’s not good or bad, it’s just information.
Support your knees - Using trekking poles, knee sleeves, or a handrail aren’t cheating, they’re a strategy to help keep you moving during painful flare-ups.
Regulate before activity: When pain has been around for a while, your nervous system needs support, too. Consider a few deep breaths or a pause before and after activity to allow your body to settle into moments of safety.
You don’t need to do all of these or do them perfectly. Even one small, supportive choice can change how your knees feel this week.
Where to find holistic physical therapy and chronic pain treatment for arthritis pain in knees in Bend, OR
Relief from arthritis pain in your knees isn’t about fixing or forcing, it’s about finding the right support and learning how to work with your body.
If you’re in or near Bend, Oregon and curious whether holistic physical therapy or chronic pain treatment could support your knees, you’re welcome to reach out.
I’m happy to answer questions, learn more about what you’re experiencing, and help you decide what next steps, if any, feel right for you.
You can schedule a free consultation here if you’d like a space to talk things through.
Disclaimer: this post is intended for informational purposes only and is not medical advice. If you are experiencing pain, it is always in your best interest to consult with your medical doctor and/or your physical therapist.
