Ask any athlete or weekend warrior how they are doing and, after some pleasantries, they may start to tell you about their knee pain. Although the knee is subject to many injuries and problems, many if not most of them have one underlying cause: misalignment of the involved joints. These may include not only the knees themselves but the feet below and hips and low back above.
The feet many times are the primary cause of knee pain that stems from faulty joint mechanics. By age 40, 95% of us have some type of issue in the normal alignment of our feet. Gravity and every day life’s minor and not-so-minor accidents and injuries take their toll. With each step we take, aberrant forces relay stress on the knees above.
Similarly, misalignments in the pelvis and hip joints will affect the knees. Additionally, the knees are controlled by the nerves that come down the legs from the low back. Any compromise on those nerves, may also affect how the muscles surrounding the knees fire.
The take home lesson? Any good practitioner will look at the entire system and not just the area of pain. By correcting the misalignment of the knees and the surrounding joints and clearing any nerve interference from the low back, many knee complaints clear up with very conservative care.