I first discovered Mueller Knee Straps after I experienced significant knee pain following a tough 18-mile training run. With only a month left to go before completing my first marathon, full rest and recovery were not options. I had to keep going! A friend who had experienced similar pain to the lower kneecap (patellar tendonitis) recommended Mueller Knee Straps.

The strap itself is simple: it is made of a neoprene-like fabric that wraps around the lower knee and affixes to itself with Velcro. In the portion of the strap that sits below the knee there is a rubber tube that helps to hold pressure below the patella.

Patellar tendonitis occurs when there is a partial tear in the ligament at the base of the kneecap. The idea behind knee straps, also known as patellar straps, is to support and apply pressure to the tendon just below the kneecap. This pressure helps to reduce impact vibrations, improve tracking, and relieve pain.

Compared with other straps on the market, the Mueller Knee Straps tighten well around my knees without causing irritation. I can get a full range of motion while running without chafing or pinching thanks to the soft padded Velcro straps and the tubing around the patella. Like any injury, in addition to this quick fix, runners with patellar tendonitis must rest and stretch to heal. But with a race on the horizon the Mueller Knee Straps provided relief from pain and even a semblance of comfort while running the 26.2 miles.

This small unit measures the effects of breathing on the parasympathetic system in order to help you feel calm and relaxed. My doctor actually prescribed it for me. The results are subtle but pretty amazing. My major successes have been trying to get to sleep at night. I fire up the small playing-card-pack-size box, which runs on two AAA batteries. Then I insert my finger into the trap door on the top left and begin working to control my breathing pattern. If you haven’t used it in a while, it coaxes you to reset date and time. Then it begins with a straight line…. and you begin to breath. What the manual recommends is that you breath in through the nose and then exhale from your mouth. What’s different from some other meditation and yoga methods is the StressEraser doesn’t want you to count on the inhale, but just to breathe in as deeply as you can. On the exhale you should do it slowly with a count to three, four, or five. The idea is to create a curving graph of regularity that can be worth 1 or 3 points on the device. A meditation session can total as many points as you want. Usually I shoot for 30. It takes a while to get into the rhythm of deeply breathing in and then slowly breathing out with a pause at each end point. It takes me about 15 – 20 minutes to get into the pattern and then complete the breathing session. When I finish, I don’t feel much different. But when I climb into bed I find it amazingly easy to fall and stay asleep. It’s not cheap, but I paid $200 for a returned model at Sharper Image. My friend gave one to her father, who uses it after watching the evening news. She says it’s worked well form him, too.

As a frequent traveler and someone who has a hard time sleeping in strange hotels, I live with a recipe for many sleepless nights. Seems like the alarm always goes off just when I have just fallen asleep. To help me get a good read on my sleep patterns and to get more restful sleep, I bought the Sleeptracker Pro, a wrist watch that monitors your sleep cycle from barely asleep to REM by tracking a succession of small bodily movements. You set the alarm for, say, 6:30 am and specify a window of time around that (normally I do 15 minutes on either end of my desired wake up time). Within that window, the watch finds the point at which I’m most awake and wakes me then, as opposed to when I’m out silly. I started using mine about 10 months ago and had success as soon as I first put it to use on a business trip. I’d tried using one of those gentle wake up alarm clocks before, but it was more like an airhorn. The Sleeptracker is far more effective (it cab be set to beep or vibrate), plus it’s on your wrist so you don’t have to remember to pack it. The set up was simple, too. I now find the watch especially useful for when I am traveling across time zones, since it helps me get a more restful sleep. The watch also monitors your sleep pattern over time and you can download the data to your PC to see the trends, which helps to spec out the optimal window you’ll need to wake up.