Do Chiropractors help with knee pain?
I couldn’t get a table at any of our favourite restaurant on Friday night! Then I remembered it was Valentines Day, I was wondering if people go out on Valentine’s Day, but apparently, they do.
Today we are celebrating my daughter Florie’s birthday, she turns 4 today. Time flies. We are having both families over for some cake which will be great. She is going on 14 and is very funny with it, I struggle to keep up with her.
We held our first live event last night; this was streamed live on Facebook and Instagram. We covered how to manage rotator cuff pain by using shockwave therapy. You can head back to the Facebook channel to watch this, it is just 30 minutes long and has a lot of information about what you can be doing to help with rotator cuff pain, Achilles tendinitis and plantar fascia problems.
This week we are talking a lot about knee pain and how we look after that in the clinic.
Very often our clients are surprised that we can help with knee pain as they think that Chiropractors just help with low back problems. We mainly see low back pain, slipped discs and sciatica, however, knee pain without trauma rarely occurs in isolation.
What does that mean?
If you had a football or trauma injury to your knee when playing sport for example, then you may have damaged one of the cruciate ligaments, the ACL or PCL. Or you may have damaged a collateral ligament (these are on the side of the knee, medial and lateral).
In these cases, the knee will have had some sort of trauma or twist, and it has put the knee under stress and damaged the ligaments.
In these cases, a physiotherapist is your best port of call. They are fantastic at getting these to heal.
The knee problems that Chiropractors can help with are more chronic where there may have been an injury 20 years ago when on a sports field, or skiing. The knee has healed but it has not healed properly and is weaker and more force is going through it in the wrong area causing degeneration and arthritis.
The other way it can happen is from an alignment problem from the hips or the foot. If the hip or pelvis is unbalanced this can put more pressure on one side than the other. Think about this, if you weigh 80kg and you have an unbalanced pelvis (this is where the bulk of our weight is) and you walk 10,000 steps per day with 50kg going through the left side and 30kg going through the right. This is 10kg more on the left side of your body, your hip, knee and ankle must take a lot more load.
It can do this for a fair amount of time until it says enough is enough which is where you will get pain.
It is important to check the soles of your shoes to see if you may have more wear at the heel on one side than the other.
The other way you can get a knee problem is from an unstable ankle and foot joint. If the ankle is rolling in too much this can cause the knee to roll in and put more pressure on the inside meniscus and cause it to wear away over time and this is the start of arthritic degeneration.
How to fix knee pain?
You have seen me talk about unilateral strength work before. This means using one leg to do your exercises rather than two. This is because the weak side will be compensated for by the strong side. Doing one legged exercise will isolate the weakness and make it stronger.
- Single leg glute bridge
- Single leg calf raises on a step
- ITB rollout on one side
- Single leg extensions and flexion with a band
These are all in this video here.
We also use shockwave therapy which is a great piece of kit to take away pain in knee joints. If you want to book a taster session to see if it will help, then email info@westchiro0.wpcomstaging.com
The key is to get rid of the pain and then align the knee by stabilising the muscles around the pelvis and hip to ensure the force is transferring through correctly. This can be done with Chiropractic adjustments and acupuncture and then rehabilitation exercises.
If you do have knee pain that has been going on for more than 3 months I would advise getting some imaging taken of your knee, perhaps an x-ray (if clinically justified) and then you know exactly what you are dealing with, we have x-ray facilities at both our clinics.
Book a consultation with a Chiropractor here
If you do know someone who wants more advice, please send them our details. You can send them this assessment as well to diagnose their back pain. It is a great tool to understand where your back pain is coming from, it is free and takes 60 seconds. Click here for assessment
