The Truth Behind Your Knee Pain!

We've discussed a fair amount of posture to this point-- time for a change of pace!  A large amount of the population has had, or currently has, knee pain (to some degree).  But if we set aside knee trauma incidences, would you be surprised if I told you that the majority of the time the real problem actually isn't in your knee?

Yes, you read that right.  Most people suffering from chronic knee pain are experiencing that pain due to another problem away from the knee, and the knee is simply manifesting some "byproduct" symptoms.

Here's a basic analogy to illustrate my point:  if a fruit tree is sprouting some nasty fruit, how many of us are focusing on that nasty fruit, or perhaps the branches, as being the problem?  A common example is a headache-- when someone gets a headache, they're focused on the fact that they're having painful symptoms (nasty fruit), and they only want those symptoms to either subside or just go away.  A couple pills later (chopping off some tree branches) they notice the decline of their symptoms (or at least their body is more ignorant to those symptoms).  What has this person done here?  Their body has sent a signal of pain to tell them there is a problem.  Yet, they don't usually care about what CAUSED that headache, only that they wanted to dull the painful sensation (the end result of the problem; the fruit).  But what is going on at the tree ROOT level?  Or, perhaps, what is wrong with the soil?

So many times we see people being prescribed a drug for symptom 'A' or 'B', and then the side effects of that drug ends up leading them to symptoms 'C' and 'D', for which there will be another drug prescribed, and so on and so forth.  We are treating symptoms instead of understanding why the symptoms are there in the first place.  If we correct the REAL PROBLEM, the byproduct symptoms will inherently go away!

So back to the knee-- if painful knee symptoms are only the nasty fruit that comes down the line, what is the root of the problem?  Why have these painful knee symptoms shown up?

Let me explain a concept which most physicians aren't even aware of.  And that is that your joints follow a pattern from bottom to top.  What do I mean?  Well, all joints are meant to provide some form of movement-- some joints have very limited movement, whilst other joints have a TON of movement.  If we were to classify our major joints into being either "highly mobile" or "relatively stable", then we start to see a pattern-- I call this, "The Joint Pattern Rule".

• Starting at the ankle-- here we have a joint which we can classify as mobile.
• Next up, the knee-- this joint only moves in one plane of motion, therefore it is stable.
• Next, the hip-- this is an extremely mobile joint.
• If we then group several spinal joints into a section, the lumbar spine is designed to be a stable section, as our muscular core surrounds this area.

That sequence of joint patterning continues up the spine, but what we've covered in those bullet points will suffice for our current knee discussion.  Most of us aren't moving enough.  So depending on several factors, such as the nature of our jobs, how we spend our leisurely time, how often we work out (or don't work out)-- do you think it would be fair to say that maybe some of us aren't as physically active as we could be?  The old adage, "if you don't use it, you lose it" comes into play.  And when we looked at the hip in the bullet points above, we noted that it is an extremely mobile joint.  Very few people are utilizing the full range of motion that their hips are intended to have.

What is the consequence of this?  Your body has an incredible ability to compensate.  So when you repetitively initiate movements that would normally require a good deal of hip motion, and that mobility no longer exists in your hip (if you don't use it, you lose it), something has to make up some ground for you.  Your body has two options:  gain more movement out of your lower back, or gain more movement out of your knee (these, of course, are the two adjacent joint areas to the hip).  But both your low back and your knee were supposed to be stable joints!  And when we force a stable region/joint to move outside of our physically capable control, we see the emergence of pain!

So!  The general strategy/approach to my patients with knee pain is to work on gaining more range of motion in the hips, and possibly ankles, depending on the patient.  As you can imagine, there's several other components/factors that can contribute to knee pain.  So if you're thinking all you need to do to rid yourself of knee pain is throw a few hip stretches into your daily routine, you should probably err on the side of caution instead:  come get yourself checked.  I'd love to see you; I'd love to be your doctor!  And besides, we need to get you out of pain first before we start re-training your hip mechanics.  I know how to do that for you, without pain killers!  :)

We can see that lack of movement leads to these knee problems (seems to be a recurring theme for all of our chronic pain problems, doesn't it?).  So what do I advise that you do to prevent having knee pain in the first place?

Get Moving!  Get Performing!


Contact info:

Dr. Kelby Martin
(929) 33-KELBY   [929-335-3529]

South Jordan Chiropractic
10456 S Redwood Road
South Jordan, UT 84095
Office phone:  (801) 446-5100