Introduction

Knee pain affects over 100 million Americans every year.  The cause of knee pain can be any of the following, sometimes in combination:

• Traumatic Injury including meniscus tear, ligament strains and tears, fractures, and dislocations

• Inflammation and Overuse Injuries including patellar tendonitis, bursitis, IT band friction syndrome, and Pes Anserine tendonitis

• Arthritis including degenerative osteoarthritis, gout, and rheumatoid arthritis

• Poor Postural Alignment and Biomechanical Impairments including pelvic positional abnormalities, poor ankle ROM, fibular head displacement, and neurological abnormalities causing stabilizer muscle misfiring, foot over-pronation

Knee Pain Causes

Since the knee is a hinge joint, positioned between two very mobile joints (the hip and ankle), the majority of knee pain (especially chronic) is due to poor alignment and poor mobility of the surrounding joints causing inflammation, damage, and instability of the knee joint.  Diet, lifestyle, and amount of exercise are also very important factors.  For example, if you are generally sedentary and eat lots of sugar then decide to take up jogging, you may have a good chance of injuring your knees due to higher inflammatory blood markers due to poor diet and no preparation for ensuring healthy biomechanics, gait, and stride.  If the pain is  due to a definite traumatic injury such as a fall or impact, chronic biomechanical impairments may or may not play a partial causative role.  How mobile and stabile are your joints, including your spine?  If for example you are a 50 year old golfer that has no thoracic spine mobility, torque from your swing can translate to your knees causing injury.

Important considerations

• No joint stands alone.  Every joint is in relationship to every other joint in the body via fascial networks which hold our body in form against the pull of gravity and other forces.  This is called tensegrity.  Imagine swinging a golf club with accuracy without moving the lower half of your body at all. If you have knee pain, you must look at your ankle, hip, and spine during diagnostic evaluation to get a whole picture.

• Acute injuries can have chronic origins and chronic injuries have acute changes.  You may be a skier with poor ankle biomechanics that constantly put your knee under stress.  That may not show up for years, until potentially/eventually you have torn your meniscus.  Or, you may have chronic back pain originating from a chronic forward head position (upper cross syndrome) that has now translated into hip bursitis because you have no thoracic mobility.  We must always look at the big picture for chronic and acute injuries.

• There are solutions.  You may need surgery, or you may not.  Many knee injuries, both chronic and acute, can be effectively be treated with acupuncture, postural correction, exercise rehabilitation, nutritional supplements, chinese herbs, and massage.  

How does Acupuncture and Postural Correction Help Knee Pain?

• Acupuncture reduces pain and inflammation

• Acupuncture can aid quickly and significantly in biomechanical correction of soft tissue imbalances.  

• Postural correction looks at the whole body and offers self empowering exercises to strengthen, mobilize, and improve joint alignment

• Almost all chronic and acute knee injuries and pain that do not immediately require medical attention (such as acutely torn ligament or a fracture) can benefit tremendously from acupuncture, DCT, Chinese herbal medicine, and corrective exercises.

Whether you are visiting the Tahoe/ Truckee region or you are a full time resident here or in Reno, you can achieve great results in only a few sessions.  

Contact us now to schedule an appointment!