My complete treatment plan (long read)

[tembo]

Doctor how about Rogaine foam?

 

[global]

I don't know. I take a bit less of a lot more stuff. I eat good whole cranberry cranbeary sause for 88 cents a can, eat canned blue berries, take vitamin C with bioflavonoids, multi-vitamin, 2mg biotin, 2-3g of fish oil, ... well, I'm not going to list my whole regimen, but I get it cheap and I take it throughout the day, not all at once. My joints are starting to feel a lot better. I can put a lot of weight on the leg extensions, whereas before my knees hurt if I did more than 20 pounds. That was a long time ago, though, and I've been building them up. Soon I'll cut up some garlic and mix it with my food each day.

And cocoa powder is cheap and loaded with good stuff. I get the unsweatened stuff. Tastes good to me.

CCS,

I know this may be somewhat off topic but be careful with seated knee extesnsion. I dont believe in them and it's well documented with NOyes, et al. that it will increase foward translation of the tibia thus putting stress on the ACL ligament and stress the cartilage behind the patella (kneecap) There are better ways to stimulate the quads such as squats leg press. If you want to use that machine use in in planes of 30 degrees to 0 degrees of extension thus no stress on knee stabilizing structures. I recommend this to all my patients after they complete their rehab. Just looking out.
BTW, I tried to unsweetened cocoa on my oatmeal...good call man. :wink:

Sorry to continue off topic, but this doesn't seem to make sense. The anterior cruciate ligament (ACL) prevents posterior translation of the tibia not forward translation. Posterior movement is what happens when the tibia is put under load in the seated knee extension.

I don't see how this movement stresses any cartilage below the patella as the patella has a bursa immediately below it not cartilage?

Using the exercise from 0-30 degrees will stress the same structures in the knee but only to a lesser degree, the stress increasing as the leg is raised to 90 degrees. If you have a problem with your knee ligaments or cartilage the best thing you can do is strengthen the vastus muscles around the knee which is exactly what the leg extension does, and you would need to go through the full range of movement to 90 degrees.

I think squats are good exercises too but imo more knee injuries occur from squatting than the seated knee extension. Also squats are a load bearing exercise which can wear down the condylar cartilage inside the knee and predispose to osteoarthritis. This doesn't happen with seated knee extensions as they are not load bearing.