New to this forum and hoping someone can give me some advice. I recently got diagnosed with complex baker's cysts in both knees. I am very athletic, and going to be teaching a fitness class soon (probably not the best line of work for me...) and my knees are killing me. I just had an ultrasound on both knees and it didn't show any tears, I'm fairly positive the cysts are caused by arthritis in both knees (ache in the morning, on rainy days, in cold weather...although maybe that's caused by the baker's cysts??? not sure). Anyway, my doc told me that I should be wearing knee braces for 4 - 6 hours a day as, obviously, exercise makes the pain so much worse. I've read a lot of conflicting information on the web...some say knee braces should be worn, others say it causes more pain and my personal trainer told me that I shouldn't wear them at all because my knee will become dependent on the brace and not function properly on it's own after awhile, which makes sense but now I'm totally confused. I was working out regularly until the pain was getting really bad a few weeks ago, and happened to injure my toe playing with my dog, to the point I couldn't walk, so I had to take a few weeks off from the gym. Now I'm back at the gym and worked out this weekend and wasn't even straining my knees a lot and I can barely walk. Can someone give me an idea of what I should do? I spoke to a physiotherapist this weekend who told me to rest for a few weeks to allow the inflammation to go down, but I don't want to rest for three weeks, work out once and have to rest again for three weeks just to keep this manageable. Feel like hitting the back of my knee with a hammer just to pop this damn thing and get it out of the way...
Any information you could provide would be greatly appreciated.Happy holidays.
