Are You Frustrated that Your Knee is Still hurting Regardless of Treatments with other Healthcare Providers?
Do you think surgery is your only option because your MRI showed arthritis or a meniscal tear?
Fearful that you have to slow down with your running, biking, playing golf, or just trying to keep up with your kids or grand kids?
I know, because we hear this all the time… People often wonder why is that others can stay active as they are getting older, but I can’t. What did I do wrong?
Well, there is VERY GOOD NEWS!
It is possible to stay active even if you have knee arthritis! What??? I know
But here is the problem with our healthcare. Doctors have no time with you anymore. They have to spend just as much time filling out paperwork to get paid. So, what do they do? They just image your knee and say you have arthritis or a meniscal tear and want to give you drugs or injections or worse surgery and get you out of their office because they have so many other patients they have to see.
You go to a physical therapist hoping to get resolution but they just give you some blanked strengthening exercises and not really evaluating you to get down to the source of your problem. Too often, you hurt in the knee, back, shoulder etc and what do we do? We only treat and look at where the site of the pain is located.
This is a huge problem. I always say, where the site of the pain is OFTEN NOT where the source of the problem is located.
You start to feel like you “just have to live with this pain” and are fearful that a wheelchair may be in your future (I know I am being a bit dramatic, but I am telling you our patients minds go to the worse case scenario!) Or you think that Surgery is the ONLY way to get you feeling good which is often not the case.
Why does this happen in healthcare? How do you stop knee pain? What are some knee pain remedies?
Here are the 4 stages of care that has to happen in order to get you back to living your life again to stop knee pain.
Improve your MOBILITY helps with Knee Pain
What does that mean?
It is how does your joints move… If you knee does not move, then it does not matter how strong you try to get, you will not be able to move through the full range of motion which means you will not be able to get stronger and will get stuck.
We had a patient who was in the process of getting a knee scope to fix “meniscal tear.” They showed a tear on the MRI, but this patient told us that he just started hurting one day. He was not sure what he did. Patients do not know what they did to hurt is a common occurrence and is great news because it means that you are fixable.
This client did not have full ROM in his knee, and he would stand and his knee would want to give out. He would get up very stiff and then as he walked it would get better. The presentation is very similar to a meniscal tear, but some things that this client was saying did not fit the meniscal tear diagnosis. We evaluated it and took baselines and sure enough his ROM started to improve when we mobilized his knee into extension (do not get caught up in what we did, just know that we can help you too and will know what to do).
He was able to walk and squat again and eventually got back to biking, walking, hiking and working out without problems at all in about 4 weeks!
The mobility is the step that most healthcare providers miss. AND you cannot just look at the knee. You have to look at hip, back, and thoracic mobility issues that can create knee pain! Another step that healthcare providers miss.
So, if you are frustrated with your treatment in that you are not getting better and they are not assessing your hip, back or thoracic spine for your knee pain, you need to find someone else! Get to the bottom of this blog to learn more on how we can help you!
STRENGTH can improve your knee pain
Once we get you moving, then we now need to address the individual muscle weakness. This is when we look at you hip, core, hamstring, and quad strength among other areas. We have to get the individual muscle to be able to work on its own before you can start working on movement patterns. You will continue to compensate with your movement patterns if you have individual muscle weakness.
Once we helped our client avoid meniscal surgery by getting back his knee ROM. We then had to work on getting his quads, and hips stronger. So that he could hike, bike and workout without compensation. Once he started our strength exercises, he was to do every day at home, then we progressed him to the 3rd phase of care.
IMPROVE YOUR MOVEMENT PATTERNS helps with KNEE PAIN
This is how you move looking for compensation patterns. For example, if you are a runner, we look at your Single leg squat to check and see if you are compensating. That is what you do repeatedly and if you cannot control a single leg squat 20x in our office, you will not be able to control when you run. This is just one example in the lower body, but if you are a swimmer we look at other movements and compensations such as shoulder elevation, rounded shoulders, etc.
A big thing that we do whether you are a runner, cyclist, golfer, tennis player or just like to workout at the gym, we look at your movement patterns to make sure you can control your body at various speeds through the motions you do repeatedly! Then you are ready for the final phase of treatment
How to RETURN TO SPORT Safely with KNEE PAIN
This could be just walking, golfing, hiking, playing tennis, running, and playing any sport really. I always like to use running as an example. You can not go back to running 10 miles when you have not run in 2 months. You will hurt. Just like you would hurt if you have not run at all and think you can just go out to run 10 miles for the first time. You will hurt yourself regardless due to lack of training.
We have to start out slowly to see how your body responds to maybe walking 3 miles for example. We want to know what happens during, after and the next day after doing this activity. It guides us in helping you get back to your activities safely. We know how to do that for you!
Overall if you miss one of these steps you will have a problem getting back to your activities fully. If you would like to learn more on how to stop knee pain, check out my top tips for knee pain remedies, then CLICK HERE to sign up to get that report in your inbox today!
Or if you would like to learn how me might be able to help you JUST CLICK HERE to sign up for a FREE Discovery visit to help you make a better decision about your health!
