Highly mobile tibia!? Knee pain...

[zebedee]

I have excrutiating knee pain whenever I go fellwalking and start descending (I know the solution is to stop, but I like it!) I have been through many theories but my latest is that the top of my tibia (bone from ankle to knee) is very mobile, in that if I pivot my ankle around (my ankle has been confirmed by a podiatrist to be freaksihly mobile) whilst holding the top of my tibia, it moves a lot more than 3 people I compared it with (lucky them!) I'm guessing that this will lead to the ligaments being pulled and stretched on walking on rough ground and becoming inflamed and therefore very painful as soon as they are asked to start decelerating me on the way down. Pain stops as soon as it levels out or goes up!

I wear lycra style knee supports which help, poles also help, but neither eliminate it. Does this sound remotely plausible and if so are there any exercises that would strenghten the knee to reduce matters further (I don't believe you can 'strengthen' a ligament itself). I can't be bothered with the NHS and don't want to trouble my expensive podiatrist with it unless it sounds plausible, especially as he didn't identify this himself.

[BlackVanDyke]

Look up the Beighton Scale of Hypermobility. Compare yourself to it. Normal level of joint mobility would score 0 or 1. If you score over about 4, you could probably quite do with seeing a rheumatologist to make sure you aren't in danger of developing properly nasty problems related to it.