Bouncing Back After Tearing Your Meniscus

Your knees are your largest joints, which makes a good deal of sense given all that they’re responsible for. Day after day, your knees not only get you to where you need to go, but they also support almost your entire body along the way.

So, when you develop a knee injury like a torn meniscus, the impact it can have on your life is considerable, and you just want to get back to normal.

While there’s no such thing as a set timeline when it comes to musculoskeletal injuries and recovery, there are some rules of thumb. As sports medicine specialists, the team here at Neuropathy & Pain Centers of Texas is well-versed in knee injuries like a torn meniscus. We want to share some of what we’ve learned below.

The degree of the meniscus tear matters

Each of your knees contains two menisci — wedge-shaped pieces of cartilage that act as shock absorbers inside your knee, expertly transferring loads from your thighbone to your shin bone.

People often incur meniscus tears playing sports involving a lot of jumping, turning, and twisting. While active people are certainly more prone to a torn meniscus, people with knee osteoarthritis (OA) are also vulnerable — more than 75% of people with knee OA have damage in their menisci.

No matter how you damaged your meniscus, the extent of the tear matters when it comes to treatment and recovery. Your meniscus is divided into two zones:

1. The red zone: the outer third of the tissue that enjoys a good blood supply
2. The white zone: the inner two-thirds that lacks a sufficient blood supply

If your tear only involves the red zone, that’s great news — the tissue has access to healing resources. If the tear involves the white zone, this can be problematic — the tissue there may not readily heal on its own without outside intervention.

The nonsurgical route for meniscus tears

Regardless of the size of the tear, it’s a good idea to take a wait-and-see approach at first and start out with nonsurgical treatments. 

At our practice, we offer a wide range of physical medicine and sports medicine services that include:

• Joint injections to reduce swelling and pain
• Physical therapy to strengthen your knee
• Cold laser therapy to help the meniscus heal
• Medical pain relief
• Chiropractic care for better joint alignment
• Bracing
• Activity modification

Using these tools, our goal is to help you bounce back from your torn meniscus as quickly and soundly as possible, but we warn you that you’ll need some patience. You should count on at least 6-8 weeks of recovery time, but this number depends upon the extent of the damage and your health.

It’s very important that you follow our instructions during this time and you strike the right balance of strengthening your knee without pushing too hard. If you push too hard too soon, you run the risk of undoing all of your good work, which can send you back to square one.

If you follow your treatment plan and your symptoms persist after three months, we may need to re-evaluate your meniscus tear to determine whether surgery is your best path forward.

To learn more about recovering from a meniscus tear, we invite you to call or message one of our locations in Waco, Arlington, Wichita Falls, and Fort Worth, Texas, today to schedule a consultation.