Types and Benefits of Knee Braces

Musculoskeletal injuries, especially the ones that involve your knee joint can be extremely painful and take long to heal. Even though the knee is you largest joint and is quite strong, it is easy to cause an injury because of its exposed position. In order to manage your knee injury, you have to use flexibility and strength exercises and also wear knee braces until you feel better and find it less painful to bear weight on your foot. The great thing about knee braces is that not only can they help with therapeutic rehabilitation, but they can also prevent the injury in the first place.

While there are many benefits of wearing knee braces, you should educate yourself about different types before you make a purchase. Generally, these braces are divided into the following four categories:

• Prophylactic braces: These types of braces are quite popular and work amazingly well to lower your risk of getting injured during football or other contact sports.
• Functional braces: You would have to find these braces when you have already sustained a knee injury. These braces work great to promote recovery and also help keep your knee functional to a certain extent.
• Rehabilitative braces: As implied by the name, you need to wear these braces when you are recovering from a serious knee injury that requires you to limit the movement of your knee joint. You may also have to wear these braces for some time after undergoing surgery.
• Unloader or Offloader braces: You will have to look for these types of knee braces if you are currently dealing with inflammation and severe pain in the knees.

As you can see that there are many different types of knee braces, so it is better to talk to your doctor or therapist and ask them for advice. They can help select a knee brace as per your unique situation. Just be sure to follow their advice and wear knee braces because they offer numerous benefits. For instance:

• You can wear an unloader or offloader knee brace in case you are suffering from a structural knee problem such as arthritis. These braces go a long way in keeping you functional.
• You may be able to perform your exercise in a safer way by wearing knee braces. It is a great idea to wear braces during your warm up exercises because this will lower your risk of getting injured while lifting heavy weights.
• You may have to stay functional in order to promote recovery, and this is when your doctor would recommend wearing a special type of knee brace. By wearing knee braces, you will be in a much better position to walk in a pain-free way.

The fact of the matter is that knee braces help stabilize your knees and work great to keep your leg muscles and ligaments healthy. Just be sure to talk to your doctor to know what type of knee brace will suit you the most.