Here at Ambleside Chiropractic Clinic in West Vancouver, we try to take a holistic approach to symptoms and help patients figure out why, how, and where the pain is happening and why it is happening. Sometimes the site of pain is not always the cause of the pain. Our West Vancouver Chiropractor will not only focus on the area of pain but will look at other factors and biomechanical causes as well.
When you feel pain in your knees, it’s simple to think that you’ve got problems with your knee joints. The correlation between feeling pain in one area and disregarding the potential for another part of your body to be causing the problem is a bit of an old-fashioned medical hang-up. The truth is that there is a significant chance that the pain in your knees is a result of problems elsewhere in your body, especially your pelvis and lower back.
The relation between pain in your knees and back pain
Your body’s musculoskeletal system is all connected. Your back, hips, pelvis, and legs are all interconnected. A series of muscles, tendons, ligaments, and bone in those areas of your body need to move as one so you can walk, run and climb up and downstairs. That means there is a chance that a misalignment in your hips and spine is currently causing your knee pain.
Patients or even their medical doctors don’t usually notice misalignment problems in the hips and spine. It’s a Chiropractor that would actually look beyond the symptomatic pain. Our West Vancouver Chiropractor is trained to examine and identify the correlation between the hip and low back to the knee/leg pain. If left untreated by a chiropractor, you could end up having unnecessary knee treatments or see a worsening of pain over time.
When to visit your Chiropractor in West Vancouver
Before deciding on having knee surgery or physiotherapy treatment, there are a few signs which suggest you should consider a visit to our West Vancouver Chiropractor.
1. Back pain and knee pain
Back pain and knee pain can happen together. This correlation is usually caused by spending too much time sitting down, whether it be for those who work long hours in the office, or perhaps if you travel long distances by plane or car regularly. This lack of activity with no stretching or exercise can cause significant back problems – such as a problem with your lumbar vertebrae or sacroiliac joints in your pelvis – which could have a direct effect on your knee joints.
2. Regular pain in the legs and knees
If you do get regular exercise and stretch your legs every day, you might be worried about the leg pain that never seems to go away. You might have even taken up massage techniques to soothe pain in your hamstrings, calves, or knees. If you have regular pain, tightness or soreness in your hamstrings, quads, hip flexor muscles or other parts of your legs, this might be a sign that you are either not stretching enough, doing the wrong type of stretches, wearing the wrong shoes, or need to wear prescription orthotics. It’s more likely that your biomechanics in your gait is causing your knee and leg pain.
3. Knee pain and bunions
While it might not be obvious what connection bunions have with your knees and spine, the relation is evident between these causes and symptoms. When you have problems with your back, which you might not even notice, these can cause the muscles in your feet to weaken. All too common is the loss of arch height either from aging or being on your feet a lot. This biomechanical weakness leads to pronation, which means that your arches have fallen and thus cause your toes to turn outward. The added stress on the pronated foot will, in turn, lead to bunions, which in turn can lead to knee pain. Identifying how these different parts of your body are connected is the job of a Chiropractor – it’s always wise to pay a visit before going ahead with drastic medical treatment.
The first steps to solve your knee pain
Our Chiropractor in West Vancouver will recommend a few methods to help resolve your knee pain. First, they’ll likely look at your gait and biomechanics to find out what might be causing your knee pain. Usually the cause is an uneven gait brought on by a misaligned and rotated hip. You will probably not feel the hip rotation, but your body does and tries to compensate by changing how you walk. Secondly your West Vancouver Chiropractor will check your feet for pronation. All these conditions means that the knee has to compensate with an increased valgus or varus knee stress, thus causing knee pain.
Here at Ambleside Chiropractic in West Vancouver, we also regularly help in other ways, such as recommending lifestyle changes, massage treatments, pain relief prescriptions, specific home stretches, shockwave therapy and more. To find out how we can help you, contact us today, and we’ll arrange an appointment to help you see our West Vancouver Chiropractor.
