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)

 

 

President Obama on January 15, 2008 (left) and on July 31, 2011. (Credit: Ethan Miller/Getty Images & Chip Somodeville/Getty Images & cnn.com)

Take a look at these two pictures of President Obama can you believe that they are only 3 years apart!  I post this to emphasize a point, “Emotional stress has physical manifestations.”   We as humans tend to differentiate the physical and emotional as separate parts of our selves, never to cross.  These pictures tell a different story.  The immense stress that accompanies the presidency has taken its toll on Mr. Obama. His wrinkles have deepened; his hair is grayer, his eyes have become more sunken and just looks like over the last 3 years he has aged 10!

 

Now we don’t have to be the president to show signs of stress.  It can manifest in many ways, here are a few examples:  More prone to sickness, injuries occur more frequently, fatigue, random pain, hair loss, skin conditions, and upset stomachs or diarrhea.

 

So what’s the lesson?  Mind your stress.  When things occur in your body, don’t ignore them, check in and see what’s happening in your life and then look what you can change to decrease the stress or increase your coping mechanisms.

Including exercise in your daily routine can greatly increase your ability to deal with stress.  Our diet also plays a big role.  If the fuel your are putting in is bad, what do you expect to get out? Lastly get outside when ever you can, we live in an age where most of us are behind a computer, locked in a room most of the day.  Go outside, breathe some non-air conditioned air and bask in your surroundings. Get a massage!  You'll be glad you did! Enjoy the rest of your life, let the politicians stress out while we keep aging at the rate we're supposed to.

 

This week MetaTouch had the privilege to participate with the George Lopez foundation whose purpose is to “Create positive, permanent change for underprivileged children and adults confronting challenges in education and health, as well as increasing community awareness about kidney disease and organ donation. It was a fun day of golf, massages and raising money for a good cause.

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.

.

I think there is still a large group of people that believe massage is only good to relax and has no true healing properties.  Well I’m here to tell you that it is just not true. Massage dates back as early as 15,000 B.C. where Prehistoric Cave paintings of massage were found.  It is instinctual, when something hurts; you rub it, if someone is crying you hold them.  Touch has incredible healing properties which we use in our day to day lives.  Massage is just a focused more direct process of that same instinctual behavior.  In knowledgeable hands many of the same things that can be seen with MRI’s, X-rays, and CAT scans can be seen with the human touch.  We have the ability to assist and manipulate the body to operate more efficiently.  Remember the purpose of therapeutic touch is not to “fix” things but instead assist the body by pointing it in the right direction to help itself.  So you can get a massage with the pretty music and smelly oils and feel wonderful, but remember, in the right hands, it can also help relieve that shooting pain down your leg or the pain in your neck that is preventing you from being able to move.

Touch and massage have always been used for healing, but because how massage is portrayed, many people are wrongly treated with drugs and surgery when a massage or therapeutic treatment could have stopped or prevented many pains to begin with.
When you do have pain don’t forget you do have options in massage.  

Please forgive me, I know this one is long.  Pick what you need out of it and enjoy.

Many people ask me “How often should I get a MetaTouch Massage” to this I answer “It depends.”

When you should get a MetaTouch massage depends on a few different factors:

• Your physical condition
• Your level of activity
• Your stress level
• Your history of injuries and when you want to!

Your physical condition can be determined by many different factors.  Eating habits, amount of exercise, your job, and family life all make up your physical condition. All these play into how you deal and manifest stress. Have you ever noticed when you go through a stressful event, you don’t only feel the mental strain that it can cause but also the physical representations of that stress. Some of the most common symptoms experienced are:  Fatigue, headache, TMJ (jaw pain) or illness. Illness occurs when you are stressed, because your body’s ability to fight off normal bugs can be greatly compromised making you more susceptible to getting sick. Getting a massage during these times can assist in lowering your stress level while at the same time strengthening your immune system so that you can fight off all the bad stuff that is thrown at you. 

Level of activity I can’t tell you the number of different responses I get when I ask “What type of exercise do you do and how often?”

Here are some examples, see which one, if any you fit into:

1. “I walk”

2. “I’ve been doing the same routine for the past 30 years and I like it!”

3. “I run, bike, swim, lift weights, yoga, hike, Pilates, knit sweaters and on SundaysI rescue small animals.”

4. “I used to exercise….”

5.  “All I do is push ups and sit ups, every day.”

1.  First, walking is wonderful, but it should not be the only exercise you get.  If you walk around the block once a week, you might be getting your blood to pump, but the rest of you is slowly atrophying into a giant ball of Jell-O.

Change it up; add some resistance exercise along with cardio.  You’ll see results much faster.

2.  For the guy who has been doing the same routine for the past 30 years, he has trained his muscles to ignore any benefits the exercise might have had at one point.  His body has reached a plateau.   Pushing 5 lbs today will not be as hard as pushing 5 lbs 10 days from now. Always safely challenge yourself.  It is the only way you will effect change.


3.  Our over achiever better be eating a lot, because the amount of calories she is burning will put her into an early grave without the right food intake. If you are working out like a mad person and are not matching it with the correct nutrition, than you could be burning muscle instead of fat. Your body also goes into a hording mode to conserve the food that it's taking. It stoes everything because it doesn’t know when its next meal will come You see this condition in people that only eat one or two meals a day and wonder why they are gaining weight.

Working out every muscle every day can be detrimental as well.  Your body needs time to recover.  This recovery time is when the muscle fibers heal and grow. Lactic acid is flushed out and the body gets ready for the abuse you are going to put it through.  So the lesson is, pace your self, eat and get a massage.  For those of you who are training for a marathon or triathlon, massage can help bring you to the next level.  MetaTouch treatments can help repair the damage that you incurred during workouts and speed your recovery exponentially.  This allows you to train harder and longer with less injury.

4.  Just because you used to run 30 miles a week, 3 years ago, doesn’t mean that you get to sit on the couch eating bon bon’s and expect to be in peak physical condition. Your body atrophies, or loses muscle, within 36 hrs of not moving.  Imagine what 3 years has done! Massage can help get all the stagnated blood moving around, while assisting the body to return to a balanced state.  This can make the transition back to exercise an easier one.   Get off your butt!


5.  So you like push ups and sit ups.  There is a slight problem with this workout; you are only addressing one part of the body while neglecting the rest.  When one only trains the “front” you can get what I call the "turtle posture", this is when everything rounds forward.  Branch out, for every chest move do a back. For every contraction do an extension.  This will help your body stay in balance and healthy.

    

.

Your Stress Level:

Massage and stress have gone together since the dawn of time.  You’re stressed, get a massage.  It will relax and calm you so that all the tension will melt away. Massage also helps reduce pain.  Pain can manifest mentally as depression, anxiety or anger.  So just think of massage as a natural form of Prozac.

History of injuries:

If you have chronic injuries, massage and MetaTouch treatments can help keep them from flaring up.  This will allow you to live a more normal life even when suffering from chronic pain.

When you want to:

If you want a massage, get one, you deserve to take care of yourself.  In this day and age massage is no longer a luxury it is now a necessity.  So call us and get what you deserve, a MetaTouch Massage!  310-397-3422 

Do you have a topic that you would like to see covered in this blog?

Shoot me an e-mail, I’ll do my best to post on the topics important to you.

Holden@metatouch.com

www.metatouch.com