Bad Advice!

I just read this from a blog I found in Google news search:

Since an ACL tear is often caused by a twisting of the knee, it would be a good idea to wear some sort of compression sleeve on your knee to reduce strain. This is especially true if you’re starting to notice a little bit of pain in your knee even if you haven’t been injured. Any pain is a sign of weakness that needs to be supported so no further damage is done.

WHAT??!?!  NO!  If you have been given advice like this, please, please, please, be careful.  Knee braces of any kind have not been shown to prevent an ACL injury, and even if they did, wearing a knee brace to compensate for proper athletic conditioning is just plain lazy, not to mention, dangerous.

Knee braces are often prescribed after ACL reconstruction.  They do a great job of controlling the range of motion (ROM) of the knee before the knee is healed.  Others can help prevent the tibia from sliding forward, putting strain on the ACL.  But they are rarely prescribed as a prevention method, only a TREATMENT method.  Think about it: If knee braces could prevent ACL injuries, which cost tens of thousands of dollars and put an athlete on the sideline for a year, wouldn’t everyone wear one?  Wouldn’t all doctors and trainers recommend them?

Compression knee braces have been shown to help with proprioception (up to 25%), which is the sense of where your body parts are positioned relative to other body parts.   It has also been shown that athletes with ACL damage often have less or delayed sense of position in their knee joint, and wearing a compression sleeve helps improve this deficiency for the first two-months after surgery.  However, there have been no studies that correlate knee braces to decreased incidence of ACL injury, and most scientists recommend using sport-specific training to strengthen the knee rather than rely on a brace as a ‘crutch.’