Knee braces for running

A pain in the knee cap will occur when it does not track in the groove of the thigh bone as it should be. This can cause pain and friction. This particular brace will give optimal knee cap tracking. Usually a brace of this sort has a strap to hold the patella in its place while the knee moves. Patella is a medical term for a knee cap.

Neoprene brace

Neoprene is a plastic material which is used for insulation of a joint. Besides insulation, these braces can provide compression or they can incorporate hinges.

Arthritic knee brace/unloader

Degeneration causes the joint space to become smaller and thus arthritis appears in that joint. When this happens a person will experience pain because there will be bone-to-bone friction. These braces have hinges and they will serve their purpose in making the friction less severe.

Knee bands

Sometimes pain will occur directly below the knee cap. In cases like this a regular knee band will lessen the pain or remove it completely. Bands are designed to go all the way around the circumference of the knee.

Hinged brace

These braces are similar to neoprene ones. However, hinged braces are larger, more rigid and give more stability. These are the ones people mostly wear after a knee surgery. There are a couple of types of hinged braces. Standard ones exist but there are those which have boundaries on movement and there are those that can be adjusted.

Things to think about

When a person gets injured, the first thing to do is to go and talk to a doctor. The doctor will say if there is a need for only a certain brace or if the person will have to spend some time in rehabilitation. Rehabilitation and proper knee strengthening exercises are far better solutions than knee braces, when a knee needs to get back to normal.