Do you or have you ever suffered from knee pain?

Knee pain is a common complaint among most of the population, but the cause of this pain is greatly misunderstood leading to countless unnecessary invasive procedures.  Those who run, or are overweight tend to be more susceptible to this type of pain.

Our natural reaction to pain is to associate the pain with its location; I cut my finger, my finger hurts, the pain is coming from the cut on my finger.  With the knee the pain can be localized but the cause can come from many different places.  Western medicine has a tendency to be very myopic, only seeing one little piece of the puzzle.  Doctors’ today all have their specialties.  The theory is that the body is so complex that to know everything about everything is impossible. Most doctors focus on one part or area of the body so that they have highest understanding of that area to best treat you.

The problem with this theory is that the body is not a bunch of individual parts but instead a complex machine which uses all these “parts” together to create the person you are today.  By not looking at the big picture, we have a tendency to “chase the pain” opposed to treating the root of the problem. 

The knee is a complex mechanism but is at the mercy of its upper and lower siblings the knee and ankle.  When one is disturbed or out of alignment, the knee has to compensate.  This compensation causes the knee to be over worked in one direction or the other which can then lead to a variety of different pains.

The best way I have found to treat the knee is to keep the hips open and aligned and the quadriceps stretched and open.  This treatment is not difficult; most patients find relief, depending on the extent of the injury, within 1-3 treatments.  Acupuncture also has a very beneficial effect in treating knee pain by helping to reduce the localized inflammation around the knee itself.

Below are two stretches that can help reduce knee pain dramatically:

Split Squat stretch:

Place one foot on the seat of a chair with the opposing foot out in front.  Keep your chest tall.  In 2-3 second intervals alternate between leaning forward and back. (Stretches Quads and hip flexors)

Pidgin:  This is a modified version of the popular yoga pose.  On the bed or low table bring one leg perpendicular to your body and lean forward.  (Stretches the Piriformis and glute muscles)

Feet:  The most neglected part of our body

I like to think of the feet as the wheels of our body.  I apologize for another car analogy, but it works.  When the alignment of your car is off, your tires wear out, your overall performance decreases and it just messes with how everything works.  Your body operates the same way.  If you sprain your ankle walking across the street, your gait (the way you walk) is automatically changed.  This change can eventually make your hip hurt because one is doing more work than the other.  This cycle continues till the whole system breaks down.

In Chinese medicine the feet and hands contain points where all the channels in the body either begin or end.  So this means something that happens to the feet can directly affect other organs or systems in the body.  That’s why a bad pair of shoes can ruin your entire day and make you feel weak or even ill.

So take care of your feet, pamper, respect and move them.  Here’s a good trick to keep your feet in peak condition:

While you’re sitting watching TV grab one foot and start pulling your toes; up and down, spread them apart, stretch them around.  Hold each stretch for 2 seconds then move it the other way and repeat.  Do 10-15 pumps per direction.

Do this twice a week and notice how the dexterity comes back into your feet (Your feet were like your hand when you were a baby; let’s see if we can get back there!) You’re back will feel better and you’ll be amazed at how much more grounded you feel.   

Thanks for reading!

This past Saturday MetaTouch hosted our first group exercise class given by trainer extraordinaire Kurt Elder; www.energyfxfitness.com

We covered a variety of different exercises to help lock in the work we do here at MetaTouch.  By going over movements that focus on stabilizing the lower back while retracting the shoulders, our participants gained useful tools to help them maintain a more stable and healthy core and body . 

Thank you for all who participated.  We are looking to make this a regular thing to help our clients get stronger and stay out of pain.

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Where does the pain come from?

The majority of people that walk into the MetaTouch clinic come because they have some type of pain.  The most common are sciatica, shoulder pain, low back pain and neck pain.  At the beginning of each treatment, I like to get a history and find out what brings them to me along with what there goals are for the treatment.  The most common comment I get from clients is, “I didn’t do anything, and then the pain just came out of no where.”  This perception that pain, “comes from no where,” I believe to be a very common misunderstanding within the medical profession and everyday people.

The body is an amazing machine filled with thousands of interconnected units that function together in perfect harmony.  When we injure ourselves, either by spraining our ankle, being tossed around in a car accident, or sitting funny on the couch for too long, we disrupt that harmony.  This disruption can lead to immediate pain, for instance, from an impact where a bone is broken, let’s say one’s ankle.  In this case the pain is clear in its cause and location.  The treatment is clear as well:  immobilize the area until the bone has re-fused and then strengthen the ankle back to its original state.  Now here is where pain can become a little more confusing.   For six weeks or so you either walked in a boot with crutches or limped around.  All this time your body was trying to adjust to its harmony being disrupted.  Remember, not only have you hurt your ankle but now all your weight has to be shifted to the opposite foot to keep your pain down and prevent you from re-injuring the damaged ankle.  Your hips shift to compensate for the new load, your shoulders roll forward to accommodate the crutches you’ve been walking with, and your head pushes forward to keep balance because your butt is sticking out everytime you walk, so that you won’t tip over.  All this happens without you being aware of any change. 

The body has an amazing ability to compensate for different changes in its machine. The problem is that the body can only compensate for a finite number of things until it goes into complete failure.  When that happens, we feel pain.   Think of it like one of those new all-wheel drive cars.  They advertise that when one wheel loses traction, power is transferred to the other wheels that aren’t slipping to help stabilize the car.  Now imagine that all the wheels fell off the car.  No amount of traction control will help you keep that car on the road.  The all-wheel drive can only compensate for a certain number of factors.  When it hits that point, it ceases to work.  The body operates the same way.

Think of the broken ankle:  Six weeks have gone by; the crutches are gone.  You are walking normally again.  Three weeks after that, you turn your neck to hear something your friend said, and bam! Like a lighting bolt, pain shoots through your shoulder and neck.  “It just happened!”  No, it didn’t.  Over the last nine weeks, your body has been trying to compensate for all the changes it had to accommodate due to the ankle break.  When you turned your head, it was as if the wheels fell off the car.  You hit that finite number; your neck had been weakened so greatly over the last nine weeks of balancing using small muscles to do the job of big ones, contracting some and fatiguing others.  Your neck gave up; it was tired! 

Now here comes the difference between MetaTouch treatments and the rest of the medical community.  Most doctors will treat the neck: injections, physical therapy on the neck, spinal adjustments of the neck, and last resort, surgery on the neck, because that’s where the problem is……isn’t it?  Remember how all this started…. the ankle?  That break changed your gait (the way you walk) which changed the way your muscles sit in your legs and hips and then changed how your head sits on your shoulders.  If all you treat is the neck, then you are only treating one part of the problem: the symptom.  Without addressing the problem, the symptom will return every time.  At MetaTouch, we will treat the neck, but we will also address and strengthen the foot, muscles in the legs and hips, different torsions in the torso.  All of these treatments help to correct the abnormal gait and align the body so that the neck can heal in its proper position.

Our society is very reactionary and narrow in how it sees things; we only add security when attacked;  we only fix the hole in the bridge if someone dies falling though it; we only go to the doctor if something hurts or breaks.  All I’m saying is let's look at why things happen; what’s the bigger picture?  Let’s work on prevention.  If we check on things before everything goes wrong (prevention), imagine how much pain and suffering we could avoid. Preventing problems and remembering where injuries began can be the key to managing and eliminating pain.

If you think you have something going on with your body, no matter how small.  Let us take a look; our therapists might be able to help prevent you from having it turn into a much greater issue. 

Thank you for your time, I look forward to seeing you soon.

Holden Zalma

www.metatouch.com