Knee Pain |

Knee Pain

Knee pain is one of the most common complaints that we see in our office, yet one of the most difficult to give general advice for in passing. At its most simple form, the knee itself can be the pain generator, but, just as often, knee pain can be just a product of faulty biomechanics elsewhere. Perhaps your hip has reduced ranges of motion.

Your body often times tries to make up for those lost ranges with trying to increase ranges of motion elsewhere as compensation, like your knee, and instead, it just ends up putting excessive strain on tissues that can’t tolerate it; thus, maybe you get knee pain without hip pain, even though the hip is the root of the problem. Disruptions in the kinetic chain, i.e. hip, ankle, and foot, all have the ability to disguise themselves as knee pain.

Additionally, all the muscles that attach around the knee, such as the hamstrings, plus sensation to the surrounding tissues are controlled by nerves that originate out of the low back. So it is also not uncommon to have knee pain actually be the product of a low back issue, such as an irritated disc.

It is so important to get knee pain evaluated by a professional who understands all the potential causes. It is not something that you want to attempt to self-diagnose or self-prescribe treatments based on the internet alone. This includes utilizing kinesiotape and orthopedic braces that you are able to purchase over-the-counter. Not to say these tools are never appropriate, but that should be the decision of the medical professional, depending on what their evaluation reveals the root of the problem is.

Depending on bracing long-term, even for just athletic performance, can have detrimental effects on our biomechanics and can allow our muscles and surrounding tissues to get weak and become dependent on the brace for support, causing more issues.

Common Issues We Treat

Patellar Tendonitis
“Runner’s Knee”
Iliotibial Band (IT Band) Syndrome
Tight Hamstrings
Knee collapse while running/walking
Ligament Sprain
Hamstring Strain/Injury
Meniscus Tear
Osteoarthritis/Degeneration

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WHAT IT IS

A lot of the knee pain that we see in our office is mechanical in nature, meaning that it’s a result of how we move and use our body. To fix a mechanical problem, you need a mechanical solution.

The rehab that we provide, both in-office and teaching the patient to do themselves, aims to restore full and pain-free ranges of motion and then strengthen the surrounding muscles and tissues to better tolerate load and stress.

Whether the knee is the pain-generator or not, we are able to assess the lower extremity as a whole to determine the most appropriate course of action and fix the root of the problem, not just put a band-aid on it.

WHAT IT ISN’T

The pain we feel is simply a request from our brain to change. Pain is often not associated with damage, rather a very apparent alert we need to change our physical behavior or else physical impairment will proceed.

Mechanical knee pain does not have to be debilitating. Just because you have knee pain doesn’t mean you need an MRI. If you do have an MRI, many of the findings can be misleading. Research shows that as many as 55% of meniscal tears are asymptomatic and are not the pain generator.

Just because your MRI shows “degeneration” or “arthritis” doesn’t mean that you’ll have to live with pain forever or that your only option is surgery.