It’s pretty common for people to come into the clinic complaining of knee pain. When you think of all the things that require motion in the knee, it’s no surprise that this joint can experience a lot of stress. Imagine the tension in your muscles when you walk down a steep hill or stand on a ladder, the knee takes all of that force. Over time, those stresses will cause ‘wear and tear’ to the joints, reducing the amount of cartilage cushion and creating laxity or a looseness of the ligaments. As with most things, the best remedy for this is prevention.
You know that the function of the knee is a forward and backward bend, which helps you travel. Well, what you may not know is that the knee also rotates. This is where we see most of our issues. The knee can do a tremendous amount of straight bending and the quad and hamstring that are responsible for that can take a great deal of stress, but, if the joint alignment is off, the cartilage may experience excessive wear and the major muscles may lack their normal leverage. Imagine your car’s tire alignment, if it is off by even a few degrees the wheels aren’t delivering the most efficient line of force and they wear out much faster.
When analyzing the knee, I look first to the small muscles that manage the twisting of the knee. If one or more are chronically tight or loose, then the knee could be tracking at an angle when you need it straight. Take a close look at some of the videos on this page and see if a bit of stretch daily doesn’t relieve the pressure and pain in your knees.
Stretching regularly helps, but sometimes the problem is deeper. Many times, issues in the low back and hips affect our walking gait and are the root cause of knee pain. Chiropractors are trained to find these complex problems and treat the misalignment through corrections and rehab. An exam of the body as a whole in our office can show whether the root issue is the joint or caused by a chain of joint dysfunction. Either way, make an appointment and let’s test the joint, get to the root cause, and a solid plan.