Question on Knee Pain

Since I've not been blogging for quite sometime due to various commitments, I decided to make one of the many questions sent to me as a blog post, I think this topic pretty much deserve it. And before people think I'm a dead personal trainer from not updating my blog, the question goes like this;

Jason jason, need ur help!!!

my friend is a long distance runner, he suffered knee pain after penang run last month.. he took glucosamine 

lask week he failed his singapore 21kim run.. 

he wanna challenge 42km run coming 11/11 

what is ur advice to him?
if he insisted the run would his knee cap get more severe hurt?

That's the original question sent to me, unedited.


And here's my response;

The are many reasons for Knee pain. Taking glucosamine as a supplement is a good thing, but it depends on the cause of the knee pain. 

Common causes of knee pain ; body structure's alignment, below optimal muscle function and strength, poor mobility of related joints (usually hip), poor strength of surrounding muscle, overuse etc.

And knee pain among runners is very common because USUALLY runners will think that they are running, using their legs therefore their legs are strong ( because they are "using leg strength to run" ). But there's so much behind the science of running that many runners are unaware about.

Yes, if he insist on running WITH pain, usually it will further damage the particular part. My advice is, do not train/compete WITH pain. Pain is a way of our body telling us something is not right. Try to find out the cause and get it fixed. 

If you go to hospital, you will generally see an Orthopaedic doctor. Their treatment modality will be pain killers / muscle relaxant , surgery and occasionally sending you for physiotherapy.
However, these do not fix the cause of knee pain, because an orthopaedic doctor do not assess what's wrong. They only treat the symptom, not the cause. 

My recommendation is see a Chiropractor for body structure allignment assessment, and then a fitness professional to work around the muscle weakness, joint immobility.