Knee injuries / Surfing knee brace.

It started when I screwed my left knee doing something I can’t remember doing. It gets swollen for no reason, sore enough that I can’t sleep, fails and is a general pain. Especially annoying trying to stand up on a board when it’s playing up. It’s why I ride a surfmat a lot because some days I can barely stagger to the waters edge.

 I spoke with various Orthopaedic surgeons I work with but everything starts with a scalpel. So I looked at knee braces but they’re not designed for surfing.

 I formed a small team of surfing people from Biomedical Device designers to anaesthetists to join together to work on this problem and we’ve formed a startup to design and manufacture a surfing knee brace based on user opinions.

https://psyrexmedical.wixsite.com/website

Im doing the initial designing, bringing in my knowledge of surfcraft materials and construction and of course I’ll be doing the product testing in the surf.

 If anyone’s had knee problems, tried knee braces or has an opinion about what would be positive characteristics for a surfing or general knee brace, please drop me a line at     psyrex.medical@gmail.com    Thanks everyone.

 

 

 

I remember talking to a guy on the beach at S-Turns one day, who told me he had both knees replaced.  I mentioned that mine locked up once in awhile.  He reckoned that I would eventually need a replacement.  Instead I thought about it and realized that there was one thing that I did that resulted in my knee locking up, popping and swelling.  I made a concentrated effort to not do that one thing and my knee improved.  Rarely locks up, pops and swells these days.  When it does happen, it is purely by accident and I can unlock it gently, with no  swelling.  Sometimes it is a case of realizing and being aware of what you have done with your body and avoid doing that.  Often times it is something really simple.  In my case it was the way I would fold my leg up under me sometimes in the course of work.

Thanks for that McDing. Other reasons reported for knee injury were college football, running, skiing, drunk and fell over and Horseplay, generally playing with the kids and getting injuries. Although it can be as simple as getting out of a chair.

 When we get enough feedback and have it ready for testing I’m going to see if I can surf in it. I can’t find a knee brace on the market that’s capable of that.

The knife isn’t so bad, sometimes its the only savior. Im surfing on a 25 year old knee surgery and a 20 year old back surgery. Both put me back in the water after months of suffering.

Yes.  Sometimes the only possibility of remedy is “the knife”.   Never had a hip or knee done.  But I would have to say that reports from friends and family have been mixed.  About 2/3 are positive.  1/3 semi-negative in which more surgery etc had to be done to get things right.  A roll of the dice.  But better results if you research and means test your surgeon.

I dont trust the medical profession, and if I did, I could not afford to do anything about my knee issues, regarding a knife.

If I could afford it, I am not sure I would wish to contribute to the system in place in these disunited states of maximum profit,  honor and integrity be damned.

 

A brace would be great, but is it going to prevent my tendons/ ligamnets/ cartilage from further damage?

 

The brace for someone with ACL issues would be far different for one with LCL  or MCL issues no?

 

Will the brace just cause more muscle imbalance and further the issue?

 

Does the brace only serve as a reminder to take it easy on the knee, and hope that it prevents the degree of hyper extension that might otherwise occur with an unstable knee?

 

30 years os so ago,  I had a  a knee brace I would wear.   I think it was ACE brand.

The little metal bands on each side rusted nicely, and if it spun off to the side the pain from under my displaced kneecap made any further movement, until realigned, far more painful than expected.  I stopped using the brace not because the knee got better, but because when it would twist slightly, make things worse.

 

I’m just trying to lose more weight, and strengthen the surrounding muscles without additional wear on what’s left inside the  knee joints themselves.  My abdominal muscles have likely never been stronger, and my crippling back pain episodes have abated by ~90% since, in intensity and frequency.

Wow that is a narrow minded attitude. Anyway my meniscus surgery and my herniated disk surgery was successful. I had the fear, but took the chance when hope was lost. Good luck, hopefully you don’t have to quit surfing because you think people in medicine are money grubbing parasites. If I put in the time going to school to be a Dr instead of surfing and partying i would expect to get paid also. I got a bone graft today because I skipped going to the dentist for to many years. Learning from those mistakes are what life’s about i guess. I put it on the card and make payments…

I respect your lack of trust of the medical profession. But theres a majority of highly skilled people blessed with brains, compassion and dexterity.

A brace is designed to reduce the physical forces on the structures within the knee to allow them to repair, if possible. No brace will grow missing cartilage. Exercise is still required to build muscle but a properly fitted brace  shouldn’t twist or injure you further. The right brace should prevent hyper extension so I’ll take your comments onboard, same with your comment about rusting. All good information, thank you.

 

@wr68

Like any profession, medicine is practiced by human animals and human beings.

ACE brace?  Just like sufboards, there are pop-outs and custom.  You get what you pay for.

In general, many braces are for preventing excessive strain/movement.  Depending on the extent of damage, normal movement without a brace is preferred.

Just like any professional/product, you have to do your homework first.

EDIT:

There isn’t anything easy, quick or cheap about going to medical school.

 

 

 

 

I guess if I’m asking for something from you I should share some of the ‘secret sauce’ involved with the design of the surfing brace.

 Initially we looked at making sports shoes, it’s a massive market ever reinventing itself with cutting edge products and we researched the latest technology from Nike with their Vaporfly/ Alpha fly shoes and how they were able to make incremental advances in energy return of just 4% , but that 4% put their marathon atheletes into new record times for the marathon. So much like surfboard design and construction there’s revolution as well as evolution, it doesn’t have to be a blinding flash , just a measureable improvement and then build upon that.

 From sports shoes the focus moved to products more aligned with our professional knowledge of healthcare but still with mobility in mind Knee Braces kept drawing a lot of comments from the group. It was something we knew intimately and even if we didn’t move forward with Knee Braces, everything we learned adding to our knowledge that would benefit the startup eventually. Look into everything in your field, good and bad, because you learn what you like as well as what you don’t like and why.

Theres a lot of knee braces available, firmly focussed on the rehabilitation and land sports market but nothing we could find specifically for surfing apart from neoprene and Velcro,  anything to do with water sports demanded specific characteristics like being waterproof, positive buoyancy and specific materials that wouldn’t rust as well as better design to avoid wear, corrosion, bulk.

We toyed, as surfboard builders do, with making components from epoxy infused Carbon Fibre but we quickly realised we would save time and money with heat formed polycarbonate or polypropylene sheet for the main components. Lightweight prototypes could be made in half an hour not days or weeks.

 At the same time as all this is happening I was voted the person to look into funding of Medical Devices and Accelerator Education Programs that provide startups with knowledge and contacts.

 In our neck of the woods Medical Technology is well funded due to its average of 10 fold return on investment and you can get huge grants of up to $5 million, so even if we went back to developing sports shoes we could still apply to the Medical Device Fund. If you can think of a surfing device that has medical benefits, the moneys there to develop it.

 

 

 

Yes exercise to the muscles surrounding the area is key.   Toned muscles will hold things in place.  Weak muscles let things slip around.  Strong abdominal will definitely help low back.  Congrats on being able to do that.

(chuckling)  Recenly, I have had to learn a whole lot more about how knees are built and work. I can now spell ‘meniscus’, though I have no idea what the plural is.  I could happily have done without this increased knowledge, but years, okay, decades of use, misuse and work have me in a place where both are simultaneously failing in the same way, though mercifully they alternate rather than both at once. So far. 

Braces, though, interesting… There’s the ones with hinges and those without, a lot of velcro and those that slip on, seems like anybody who can make one has.The field is definitely open.

So - one for surfing and ( open up the market ) most water-related pursuits. Needs to be water and  corrosion resistant, needs to work either on top of a wetsuit or without a wetsuit/under waders let’s say. Nothing hard and projecting ( wetsuits, waders for fishermen,  and surfboards would suffer), fairly compact so it would work under some things , deal with water and air temperatures from, say, `-10°C to 45°C (salt water winter diving or snowboarding to surfing the tropics ) reasonable impact resistance/protection ( I bump something with the knee, now, and the screams bother the wildlife) . 

I’d suggest something with hinges, replaceable nylon or HDPE T-washers/bushings to handle wear and friction,  probably of either relatively light construction stainless or thicker and really really well coated aluminum. CAD/CAM. I’ve seen polycarbonate components for similar stuff, but between bulk and my possibly unreasonable fears of a brittleness/glass transition temperature/UV degradation thing going on I’d stick with metal.

Positive buoyancy? Yeah, okay, but just barely so in fresh water so it wouldn’t immediately sink to the bottom of a pool or stream or lagoon if it got dropped. .

Washable in fresh water and soap, so you can get the salt out and not get salt water chafe sores.  

As this little thought experiment  proceeds, a couple of things are coming out of it. 

First, it’d be really complex to make one something that’d do everything, a ‘swiss army brace’. Or a bunch of variations that would be expensive, complicate the development and make keeping all the models in stock a lot of no fun.  Might want to make it modular, ideally with various components that snap or velcro on or off, for different  sizes and uses, I think the components would be easier to develop, manufacture and for your customers to keep in stock.

.Next- yeah, a surfing brace is nice, an all-watersports brace is better and opens up your market a lot. And anything that would work for that is actually a really good general purpose knee brace that, as it happens, you could use surfing or general active sports too. Which might be a good way to go, nobody wants to have to lug around a bag of various braces for surfing, hiking, bike riding, formal wear, what have you. Again,  a modular approach might be your friend. Plus it’s a lot easier to make and sell the incremental improvements as components rather than the whole thing, cost issues if nothing more.  

And there’s also the King Gillette model to think about. Yeah, King was actually his first name. He gave away the original double edge razors and got quite rich selling the replacable blades. Selling the components (which unlike the basic knee brace could be patentable) might be your profits. 

Keep us posted. And if you need a beta-tester…

doc… just call me Gimpy