Knee Pain

Your knees are the largest joints in your body, connecting a large number of muscles, 3 bones, and numerous ligaments. That means that much of the daily abuse that your body takes can ultimately impact your knees. For that reason, it’s important to seek medical attention for knee pain as soon as possible. Often, physical therapy can be the key to avoiding surgery or prescription medication altogether.

Ligament and Meniscus Tears

Knee PAin Knee Pain

Locking, clicking, catching, and giving way. Physical therapists are able to diagnose ligament and meniscus tears through a series of special tests and whether you are experiencing any of these symptoms (remember – non-painful clicking in the absence of other symptoms is nothing to worry about). If you do have a tear in a ligament or meniscus, it’s always worth attempting physical therapy first.

Surgery is always an available option if you don’t progress as expected, but isn’t it worth seeing if you can avoid a costly and risky procedure? Especially for meniscus tears, which are like wrinkles with aging, but are the most commonly performed repair surgery in America. One study even compared a sham surgery with arthroscopic partial meniscectomy and found no difference between the two groups!

The victims of inefficient movement

Unless you’ve traumatically torn something in your knee, your knee pain is often the result of dysfunction elsewhere in the body. Because of gravity, the weight of your body pushes down on the ground, but did you know the ground pushes back up at you? If it didn’t, we would be living in a world of quicksand. These forces moving up and down through your body pass through your ankles, knees, and hips.

If your ankles or hips can’t take the load, the forces are all absorbed through your knees, making them the victims of unequal weight distribution and likely injury. Conditions that require assessment for dysfunction at the hips and ankles include patellofemoral pain syndrome, chondromalacia patellae, and knee arthritis.

How can physical therapy help?

At BodyGears Physical Therapy, we complete a thorough evaluation including examining how you walk, your joint range of motion, muscular strength, postures, and mechanics of any other movements you frequently perform, such as squats and stair climbing. We’ll also screen your ankles, hips, and back to make sure they’re not contributing to your symptoms in any way. We use many techniques and forms of treatment, including joint mobilizations, soft tissue manual therapy, Functional Dry Needling, muscle activation and strengthening exercises, balance exercises, and functional movement re-training including walking, running, and squatting.

Our goal is to help you manage and eliminate pain, improve range of motion, increase muscle activation and strength, and restore efficient movement mechanics to get you back to normal function. Long-lasting relief from knee pain is on the way with the help of a physical therapist!

Request Free Consult or Contact Us Today at Chicago Lincoln Park, Oak Brook, Oak Park, & Winnetka, IL Centers to learn more about how we can help you get back to the things that matter most and enjoying life without pain.

Sources: http://annals.org/aim/article-abstract/2490532/mechanical-symptoms-arthroscopic-partial-meniscectomy-patients-degenerative-meniscus-tear-secondary#.VsfPIxQm61Q.linkedin