Knee pain is a common symptom for active individuals and runners.
The fancy word for pain in the front of your knee or underneath your knee cap is patellofemoral pain. This pain can be caused by several factors and new research supports a holistic approach to treatment.
Think about where your knee is located...between your hip and ankle, right? Due to their close proximity to the knee, these joints can affect knee alignment, forces, and ultimately can cause knee pain. So, it's best to think about the whole lower extremity together as possibly contributing to pain.
Let’s move
down from the hip to the foot to see how altered movement and strength at these
joints affect knee pain…
Hip - Weak
hip strength can cause your lower leg to rotate inward during dynamic exercise
causing increase stress under your knee cap.
Thigh - One
of the functions of your front thigh musculature (quadriceps) is to absorb
compression and shock from your knee. If
these muscles are weak then added compression forces are transferred to the
knee joint.
Foot – Too
much or limited motion of the foot alters knee alignment also attributing to
knee pain.
All of these
factors can contribute to knee pain, so make sure your health-care provider looks
at the whole picture! Take a look at the figure below. The good news is that there are targeted
interventions for each body part that are proven to be beneficial! 
The figure above is courtesy of the Journal of Orthopaedic and Sports Physical Therapy. You can visit the journal for even more information on common physical therapy treatments for knee pain.
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| More About Frank J Klene |
This is a great article. It's nice to see that somebody is taking into consideration that the body is the sum of its moving parts. Thanks for showing the entire picture.
ReplyDeleteKnee pain can be occur by several factors, but there are a number of treatment to get rid of knee pain.
ReplyDeleteKnee Pain