When it comes to degenerative knee disease, doctors often say, “No medicine if you can get physical therapy, no injections if you can get medicine, and no surgery if you can get injections. Indeed, in the early stages of degenerative knee disease, functional exercise and physical therapy can be used to relieve pain and improve movement limitations, which cannot cure the disease completely, but can help patients delay or avoid surgery. Early stage degenerative disease depends on maintenance or practice? Many patients have knee pain and are diagnosed with degenerative knee disease when they go to the hospital, so they mistakenly believe that activity will aggravate joint degeneration and simply lie still every day. In fact, although the early stages of the disease require maintenance, maintenance does not mean not moving at all. The maintenance refers to the maintenance of the joints, such as keeping the joints warm, reducing activities such as walking up and down stairs and squatting, and bringing knee pads when exercising. If you do not move for a long time, you will only cause muscle atrophy, and the lack of muscle strength will aggravate the wear and tear of the knee joint when walking. Moreover, part of the nutrition of the articular cartilage depends on the movement to squeeze the synovial fluid to supply the cartilage, so immobility can also cause “malnutrition” of the articular cartilage. At the same time, it is not enough to protect the knee joint just by nourishing it, but also by doing proper exercise. In addition to normal walking, you can do some non-weight-bearing movements to exercise the strength of the quadriceps. Common ones are swimming, and you can also straighten your legs while sitting and hook your toes upward with your heels on the ground. Physical therapy and hot compresses should be used at the right time. For early joint pain, in addition to the combination of nourishment and practice, physical therapy can also be used appropriately, commonly used are heat-producing ultraviolet and infrared radiation, and non-heat-producing spectrum devices and lasers. You can also apply local heat or cold compresses to the joints, but be careful to do so under the guidance of your doctor. For example, if you have just climbed a mountain and the joint swelling and pain are in the acute stage, you cannot use heat-producing physical therapy equipment or apply heat, otherwise the blood vessels and synovial membrane will expand further after the heat, secreting more joint fluid and aggravating the joint swelling. In this case, cold compresses or physical therapy devices that do not produce heat should be used to promote the absorption of inflammation. For the non-acute stage, for example, if the leg has been cold for many years, there is no obvious redness, swelling and joint fluid, you can apply heat or use a heat-producing physical therapy device to promote the absorption of inflammation.