The levels of your natural anti-inflammatory hormone, cortisol, are naturally lower at night. Staying still in the same position will also cause your knee joints to stiffen up. Another reason could be related to how your brain perceives pain and this may change in the small hours.
Symptoms of bursitis and tendonitis are similar. They include pain and stiffness that gets worse when moving. Pain may be felt more at night. Almost any tendon or bursa in the body can be affected.
Knee pain may be caused by repetitive stress injuries (called "runner's knee"), osteoarthritis, bursitis, or other conditions. It may be more apparent at night because you're at rest, but it doesn't have to derail sleep.
Tip #1 Avoid Prolonged Kneeling or Excessive Squatting
Prolonged kneeling and excessive squatting can irritate and inflame the bursa: when you kneel or squat, the pressure that your knees bear is roughly eight times your normal bodyweight. If modifying your activities is not possible, try not to squat all the way down.
Landing on your knee.
Sports that involve falling on your knee, delivering a direct blow to it such as football and volleyball, are traumatic for the knee and can aggravate bursitis symptoms.
Apply an ice pack to your knee for 20 minutes at a time several times a day until the pain goes away and your knee no longer feels warm to the touch. Apply compression. Use of a compressive wrap or knee sleeve can help reduce swelling. Elevate your knee.
Use a Soft Mattress or a Body Pillow
If you're experiencing aches and pains as a result of bursitis, consider using a soft mattress. The right soft mattress for you should provide optimal support and pressure relief. Nurse Cobb also recommends placing a small body pillow between your knees for more comfortable rest.
Is it OK to walk with knee bursitis? Walking can aggravate the symptoms of knee bursitis, so it's important to listen to your body and take it easy if you're experiencing pain. However, walking is not likely to cause further damage to the joints and may help reduce inflammation.
Tips for Knee Bursitis Relief
Rest and avoid activities that aggravate your symptoms. Pain is a sign that you should stop what you are doing. This will help reduce inflammation and allow your body to heal. Apply ice to your knee for 20 minutes at a time several times a day to reduce swelling and pain.
A sharp blow to the knee can cause symptoms to appear rapidly. But most cases of knee bursitis result from friction and irritation of the bursa that occurs in jobs that require a lot of kneeling on hard surfaces — so symptoms usually begin gradually and can worsen over time.
Staying still in the same position will also cause your knee joints to stiffen up. Another reason could be related to how your brain perceives pain and this may change in the small hours. Your perception of pain is more pronounced at night or to put it another way your pain thresholds are lower at night.
Over-the-counter medications — such as ibuprofen (Advil, Motrin IB, others) and naproxen sodium (Aleve) — may help ease knee pain. Some people find relief by rubbing the affected knee with creams containing a numbing agent, such as lidocaine, or capsaicin, the substance that makes chili peppers hot.
You can apply heat with a heat wrap, heating pad, or hot water bottle. If you regularly experience hip pain at night, you may need solutions for longer-term relief. You may want to consider changing your mattress. A mattress that's too firm may be especially painful for people who have hip bursitis.
Inflammation in the bursa can cause significant pain while lifting or performing a rotational motion with the shoulder. When you lay on your side, the bursa in the shoulder can be compressed, leading to increased pain at night or when trying to sleep that may persist until proper treatment is provided.
Bursitis is likely to improve in a few days or weeks if you rest and treat the affected area. But it may return if you don't stretch and strengthen the muscles around the joint and change the way you do some activities.
Unfortunately, this is one of the worst things that you can do as it will cause further irritation of the condition. Unlike a muscular injury, which can respond well to massage, knee bursitis contains inflammatory fluids which are encapsulated in the inflamed and swollen synovial lining of the knee bursa.
Heat (eg, a heating pad) may be more effective for deeper forms of bursitis, such as the hip, shoulder, or inner knee. In many cases, physical therapy can help treat symptoms of bursitis and prevent future recurrence.
Foods that can trigger inflammation may make your pain worse so these are ones to avoid if you can. This includes processed foods (ready meals, sliced meat), caffeine, fizzy juice, sugars (cakes, biscuits etc.), and alcohol.
If you have chronic bursitis, try to minimize flare-ups by stretching each day to increase range of motion. And avoid activities that you know will result in pain. Repetitive-motion activities are especially bad for bursitis. If you do have a flare up, remember that resting your hip is important.
Walking, running, cycling, and many cardio exercise machines, as well as, deep squats, and lateral hip exercises can all aggravate hip bursitis pain because of the compression caused. For similar reasons sitting with crossed legs, standing with a dropped hip, or lying on your side can also be very painful.
With rest and treating your prepatellar bursitis from home, the swelling and other symptoms usually go away in a couple of weeks. If your prepatellar bursitis doesn't get better after two or three weeks of rest, reach out to your healthcare provider. You may need medical treatment.
Gently spread your knees apart, stretching the muscles on the inside of your thighs. Hold the stretch for 15 to 30 seconds. Repeat 3 times. Quad sets: Sit on the floor with your injured leg straight and your other leg bent.
The length of one's knee bursitis may vary for each individual. With the proper treatment, knee bursitis can be healed in an average of two to eight weeks.