Iliotibial Band Syndrome

So I have a fussy left knee (I sound like an old lady). It's bothered me for the past year. Now I'm no doctor, but the Greek in me can't help but use a home grown diagnosis and in this day in age that means using DR. INTERNET!

I've decided that I have *drum roll please* ILIOTIBIAL BAND SYNDROME!

What it is:

lateral knee pain in runners (sometimes referred to as runners knee). the band is responsible for stablizing the knee and runs from the hip to the tibia. If the running gate is disturbed in any way, the IB will begin rubbing against another part of the knee becoming inflammed.

Symptoms:

• stinging sensation just above the knee joint (on the outside of the knee or along the entire length of the iliotibial band) check pain runs from outside of my knee to my hip
  
• swelling or thickening of the tissue at the point where the band moves over the femur. check I can't bend my knee after running b/c it's swollen!
• The pain may not occur immediately during activity, but may intensify over time check, doesn't set in until about 3 miles into activity and pain intensifies after work out
  
• Pain might persist after activity. check, for an hour and then it disappears
  
• Pain may also be present below the knee. sometimes. not often.

Cause

• Running on a banked surface (such as the shoulder of a road or an indoor track) bends the downhill leg slightly inward and causes extreme stretching of the band against the femur check (incured injury after a winter spent running on Albion's indoor track)
  
• Inadequate warm-up or cool-down check (I don't typically warm up or cool down)
  
• Hiking long distances ha, check
• Inadequate footware 6 year old sneakers w/ holes in the heels seems pretty inadequate to me!
  
• High or low arches check (flat footed...)
  
• overpronation of the foot (both feet pronate but my left foot pronates the most and it so happens that my left knee is the injured knee)

I am also silently praying that this is the cause b/c the treatment is a breeze. RICE, and new shoes.

but if it gets worse I'll just succumb to the Dr.