Knee Pain Treatment in Anchorage, AK

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Knee Pain Treatment Directory

What Causes Knee Pain

Knee pain is one of the main reasons why people seek out a doctor. Knee pain can be caused by injury, postural problems, arthritis, infection, and referred pain from other areas of the body (e.g., lower back and hip). Knee pain is sometimes accompanied by:

• Edema (swelling) and tightness around your knee
• Increases in pain when walking up or down stairs
• Warmth to the touch of your knee or patches of redness
• A feeling of knee instability or weakness
• Inability to fully bend or fully straighten your knee 
• Crunching and popping noises when moving your knee

The location and intensity of knee pain depends on its cause. For most people knee pain is diagnosed by injury or damage to:

• Tendons (occur at the ends of muscles, they’re thick, fibrous tissues that attach muscle to bone)
• Ligaments (tough fibrous bands that can attach one bone to another)
• Bursae (fluid-filled sacs that reduce friction)
• Bones (thighbone (femur), shin bone (tibia) and knee cap (patella))
• Articular cartilage – smooth white tissue that covers the ends of your thighbone and shin bone that helps smooth joint movement
• Meniscus cartilage (thin pads sandwiched between the thigh bone and shin bone. The menisci’s main role is to cushion and stabilize the knee joint).

However, injury, damage and dysfunction to veins, arteries and nerves around the knee is also common, yet it’s often under-treated as a cause of knee pain. These can underlie some of the most common diagnosed knee conditions that we help, such as: 

• Fractures
• Ligament Injuries (primarily ACL)
• Dislocation (Knee cap)
• Meniscal Tears 
• Bursitis 
• Tendonitis 
• Tendon Tears
• Arthritis

Although these are some of the most common diagnosed knee conditions, without a memorable or traumatic event you aren’t always sure how you developed a particular condition. Knee pain is actually often caused by injury and dysfunction to different types of fascia.

Fascia coats all of our anatomy from head to toe; it interconnects across all parts of the body (skin through to the center of our bones). Fascia is effectively a key part of your body’s ability to sense and protect itself, and responds with pain, spasm, and inflammation when a particular area is threatened or harmed.

Whether your knee pain is caused by a recent injury or surgery, treating the different fascia around the knee can be key to reducing pain and reducing recovery times. Knee conditions that don’t have a traumatic cause are often produced by wear and tear of the knee joint. Why we get wear and tear is commonly because of one or more of these problems – overuse (e.g., sports injury or daily activity), long-term stress into the joint (e.g., mechanical problems or body posture issues), or degenerative conditions like arthritis. Very commonly, all three of these problems have fascia dysfunctions of the knee, back, hips and feet that are either a root cause or a key factor as to why your condition can persist and re-occur. Whether it’s surgery, injury, or wear and tear, treating long-term fascia dysfunctions can help many of the underlying causes of knee pain. Even pain associated with arthritis can be helped when your fascia is treated. Click here to find why fascia is so important to knee pain and what treatment can address these kinds of fascia dysfunction problems successfully.

Contact us if you want to find out how treating fascia can help you resolve your knee problem

Fractures

Knee fractures are normally caused by an abrupt injury, such as a fall or a high-speed impact, though some who suffer from reduced bone density (osteoporosis) can fracture a knee simply by taking a “wrong” step. Your knee joint has three bones – thigh bone, shin bone and your kneecap (patella). People generally know immediately that something is wrong after a knee fracture. Sharp knee pain can be accompanied by other symptoms, such as:

• Swelling, bruising or a deformed appearance to the knee
• Can’t place weight on the affected leg
• Trouble straightening or bending the knee
• Tenderness of the kneecap
• Movement causes a scraping or grinding feeling

Depending on the severity/complexity of your knee fracture(s), a doctor might recommend a cast, surgery, or sometimes to let it heal on its own. These factors influence the length of recovery time and how long your rehabilitation will take. Normally, most people can resume regular activities within 3-6  months, although recovery time for patients with severe fractures can take longer. 

A key factor that you may not have heard as to why your recovery can be slow or why pain and stiffness remains after the fracture has healed is your fascia. After a fracture, your bones’ internal fascia, as well as the fascia of the surrounding soft tissues, can all become injured. This normally heals, however sometimes the injured fascia becomes dysfunctional and can significantly slow down recovery and even cause chronic pain.

Click here to find out how you can speed up your recovery time and resolve chronic knee pain when your fascia gets the right help with a treatment called Fascial Counterstrain therapy.

Ligament Injuries (ACL injury)

Your ligaments are tough, fibrous bands that in part hold your bones together and help your joints to move properly. One of the most common sports injuries to the knee is an ACL injury (Anterior Cruciate Ligament injury). It’s generally caused by a hard stop or a forceful twist of the knee. An ACL injury causes severe pain, swelling, and can cause your knee to feel unstable.

The ACL connects the base of the thigh bone (femur) to the top of the shin bone (tibia), and when this ligament is sprained it’s called an ACL injury. A sprained ligament is one that’s stretched or torn, either partially or completely. Around 50% of ACL injuries happen in combination with injury to other parts of the knee, including your meniscus, articular cartilage, or other knee ligaments (e.g., PCL – Posterior Cruciate Ligament, MCL – Medial Collateral Ligament, LCL – Lateral Collateral Ligament). People who participate is sports like football, ice hockey, or skiing are more prone to ACL injury. There is a grading system for ligament sprain severity, it goes between grade 1 which is a stretching or very mild ligament tear through to grade 3 which is a complete tear. 

The treatment for ACL injury is commonly either surgery or physical therapy. Your treatment and recovery time can depend on the severity of knee injury, your activities, and other risk factors. Recovery times can also depend on what is meant by “recovery”. For example, a surgeon might say 3 months before you can return to exercise, whereas a PT may still see the need to do more work in order to return the knee to proper function. And if you’re a patient you might not feel fully recovered even within these definitions. So, recovery times are variable, but typically might range between 3 and 12 months. 

A key common factor that you may not have heard of that very often is the main driver for why recovery from an ACL injury can be difficult and take longer is dysfunctional fascia spasm in your knee, back, hip and feet. These long-term dysfunctional fascia spasms can exist before the injury and can also be caused by the injury. These spasms can prevent the joints from moving normally, which can cause an abnormal twisting stress in the knee, making you more prone to tear an ACL and making it harder to recover from an ACL injury.

Fascia treatment of an ACL injury can reduce pain and swelling around the knee, restore the ability to straighten and bend your knee, and improve its strength and stability. Click here to find out how you can speed up your ACL recovery time and resolve knee pain and stiffness when your fascia gets the right help with a treatment called Fascial Counterstrain therapy.

Dislocated Knee vs Dislocated Kneecap 

A dislocated knee is a medical emergency. It occurs when the thigh bone (femur) is displaced relative to the shin bone, so that the thigh bone appears out-of-place relative to the shin bone. This displacement often frequently tears not just the ligaments of the knee, but the cartilage, arteries, veins and nerves can all be injured also. Given the severe nature of knee dislocation, full recovery can require an additional therapy that can target and treat all the different structures and tissues that can be injured around the knee (such as cartilage, arteries, etc.). If long-term pain and tightness persists, it can in part be because the fascia of some of these tissues hasn’t been correctly treated – or treated at all. Click here to learn how fascia dysfunction can prevent your pain from resolving after a dislocated knee. 

A dislocated kneecap is when your kneecap (patella), a small triangular bone, slips out of place. This can occur from a direct blow to the knee or after a forceful sudden twist of the knee. This is a common sports injury; the risk of kneecap dislocation increases if:

• You play sports that need you to pivot directions or are high impact
• You have muscles, ligaments, and tendons that are too loose 
• You have muscles, ligaments, and tendons that are overly tight on one side 
• You have a wider pelvis, woman; on average, are wider than men 
• You have a former significant knee injury or your kneecap has slipped out before.

A common reason why some people are more susceptible to a dislocated kneecap is because of problems in the alignment of your body. A key driving factor of this that you may not have heard about is dysfunctional fascia spasm in your knee, back, hip and feet. Dysfunctional fascia spasm can cause long-term mechanical stresses that can gradually torque the kneecap, making it more susceptible to dislocation. Treating fascia dysfunction removes these mechanical stresses and restores circulation, reducing the chance of another dislocation and helps speed up recovery time. 

If you want to learn how treating fascia dysfunction with Fascial Counterstrain therapy helps you both speed up recovery time from a dislocated kneecap and reduce the chances of its re-occurrence, click here.

Meniscal Tears

A meniscus is a tough rubbery flat pad that absorbs shock in the knee. You have two meniscus pads per knee and these are sandwiched between the base of the thigh bone and the top of your shin bone in the joint. A meniscus tear is one of the most common knee injuries, torn either by injury or overuse. Sports and activities that cause forceful twisting of the knee while weight-bearing (e.g., skiing) can cause a tear. Sometimes, deep squatting, kneeling, and lifting something heavy can cause a meniscus tear. More active or older adults can have degeneration of the knee which can precipitate and lead towards a meniscus tear, with little or no injury-causing event.

The signs and symptoms of a torn meniscus include:

• Swelling or stiffness
• Pain while twisting your knee
• Your knee joint feels locked and you have difficulty straightening it
• Knee instability, feeling like your knee could give way
• Popping sensation when moving your knee

Treatment can range from medication, knee stabilization, physical therapy through to surgery and depends on the type, size, and location of your meniscus tear. Tears that are on the outer one-third of a meniscus have a chance of healing on their own without the need for surgery, this is because this area has a rich supply of blood. However, the inner two-thirds of a meniscus lack blood supply, thus more people may need surgery as a treatment.

A key factor that you may not have heard about for why meniscus tears develop is dysfunctional fascia spasm in your knee, back, hip and feet. In fact, your recovery time can be sped up when the dysfunctional fascia spasm around your injury gets treated since fascia spasm can restrict the flow of blood and nutrition into the injury. Additionally, the reason why long-term dysfunctional fascia spasms in your knee, back, foot and hip are relevant is because they can prevent correct movement of those joints. These dysfunctional spasms can cause an abnormal twisting stress in the knee, which over the long-term makes it more prone to degenerative changes, including meniscus tears.

Click here to find out how to reduce meniscus tear recovery time and reduce the chance of even developing a tear by addressing your fascia dysfunction with Fascial Counterstrain therapy.

Bursitis

Bursitis is inflammation of a bursa (plural: bursae), which are small, thin, fluid-filled sacs that reduce friction between your bones, muscles, tendons, and skin. You have several bursae dotted around the knee, but knee bursitis is commonly located in the bursae on the inside of your knee below the joint and over the top of the kneecap. Bursitis can cause pain and limit your knee movement.

Knee bursitis can be caused by:

• A direct blow to the knee
• Frequent or prolonged kneeling on hard floors 
• Overuse or overdoing activity
• Bacterial infection of your knee bursa
• Arthritis around the knee

Treatment approach often depends on the severity, reoccurrence, and cause of bursitis. Bursitis treatment tends to focus on symptom relief. Typical treatments include physical therapy, medication, other procedures like injection or aspiration (the drawing of fluid from a bursa using a syringe), and rarely, surgery. 

A key factor that you may not have heard about for why bursitis develops is dysfunctional fascia spasm in your knee, back, hip and feet. Additionally, the reason why long-term dysfunctional fascia spasms in your knee, back, foot and hip are relevant is because they can prevent correct movement of those joints, which can cause an abnormal twisting stress in the knee, making you more prone to overuse conditions like bursitis. Fascia treatment that focuses on fixing your fascia dysfunctions can be key to a full recovery from bursitis and can help speed up your recovery. 

Click here to learn how you can hasten your recovery time while also reducing the chance of bursitis reoccurrence by addressing fascia dysfunction with Fascial Counterstrain therapy.

Tendonitis

Tendonitis is where multiple small micro-tears in a tendon cause pain and inflammation within it. Tendonitis is generally an overuse injury and occurs because of repeated stress to a tendon. Tendons are part of a muscle and form the ends of it. They’re thick, fibrous tissues that generally attach muscle to bone. Patellar tendonitis is a condition where the short tendon that attaches the kneecap (patella) to the top of shin bone is overused and becomes inflamed. 

If after a few weeks the body can’t completely repair all this micro-tear damage, your tendonitis can become a tendinopathy, where the tendon is weakened by breakdown and the damage to it.

Tendonitis around the knee can affect how well you can participate in sports, and if it gets worse, it can affect normal everyday activities like climbing the stairs. Several factors can contribute to why you get tendonitis, including 1) exercises that stress your patella tendon – running and jumping, 2) alignment or mechanical issues that effectively place your tendons in a state of low-level but chronic stress.

Treatment for tendonitis includes rest, physical therapy, certain medical procedures (e.g., injections), and more rarely, surgery. A key factor that you may not have heard of that very often is the main driver for why tendonitis develops or reoccurs is dysfunctional fascia spasm in your knee, back, hip and feet. The reason why long-term dysfunctional fascia spasms in your knee, back, foot and hip are relevant is because they can prevent correct movement of those joints, which can cause an abnormal twisting stress in the knee making you more prone to tendonitis. 

Click here to learn which treatment is key to full, speedier recovery and prevents tendonitis reoccurrence.

Tendon Tears

Muscles are connected to bones by tendons. The tendons in the front half of your knee include your patellar tendon, which connects the patella bone (kneecap) to your shinbone, and your quadriceps tendons that attach the quad muscles to your kneecap (patella). These tendons can become either partially or completely torn (ruptured). When either is torn, they create pain when you try to straighten your leg. If you have a full patellar tendon tear, you can’t actually straighten your knee actively, however someone else can move your leg and straighten your knee for you. Small tears can cause your knee to buckle, and make it hard to walk or take part in daily activity.

When tendon tears are caused by injury, it usually requires a significant force to tear your patellar tendon (e.g., falls and jumping). Another cause of a tendon tear is if the tendon has become weakened, making it more prone to tearing. Tendonitis can lead to tendinopathy, which is a condition that degenerates and weakens the tendon, making it more prone to tearing. As mentioned above a key cause of tendonitis that you may not have heard of is long-term fascia dysfunction in the knee, back, hips and feet. This is relevant because it can prevent correct movement of those joints and can cause a chronic abnormal twisting stress in the knee, again making it more prone to tendon tears. Additionally, fascia dysfunction around the knee can restrict circulation of blood and nutrition. This makes it harder for the body to repair the tendon, which, again, leads to further tendon weakening.

There are several other causes of tendon weakening; some of these include diabetes, lupus, infection, rheumatoid arthritis, certain antibiotics, and multiple (3+) repeated corticosteroid injections into a tendon.

Treatment options depend on the severity of the tear and often include surgery, physical therapy, and immobilization of the knee. After a tendon tear, treating the body’s long-term dysfunctional fascia spasm is important to full recovery because it addresses some of the main underlying causes that weaken the tendon. Click here to learn how you can recover from and prevent tendon tears by addressing fascia dysfunction with Fascial Counterstrain therapy.

Fascia injury and dysfunction – the most common, yet least talked-about cause of knee pain

Whether it’s an underlying cause of a condition or if it’s what’s stopping you from fully recovering after treatment, fascia plays a pivotal role in the conditions that cause knee pain. Fascia is central to your ability to sense pain. This is because most nerve endings that transmit pain are housed in your body’s fascia, so the pain that you feel from any injury, condition, or disease is actually coming from the fascia of that affected tissue or body part. 

Fascia coats all of our anatomy from head to toe; it interconnects across all parts of the body (skin through to the center of our bones). Fascia is effectively a key part of your body’s ability to sense and protect itself, and responds with pain, spasm, and inflammation when a particular area is threatened or harmed.

Fascia interconnects across and pervades through all parts of the body and coats all of our anatomy from head to toe (skin through to the center of our bones, including nerves, veins, arteries, muscles, discs, and more). Fascia plays a key role in your body’s ability to sense and protect itself. It responds with pain, spasm, and inflammation when a particular area is threatened or damaged. 

Fascia plays a central role in protecting and healing the body from injury. It’s actually the nerve endings in your fascia that are responsible for sending the “all clear, good to go!” message to your body after injury.  Until they send this message, your body keeps the muscles and fascia guarding the injury tight. This is in part achieved by the “pain-spasm-pain” cycle. This is where pain causes both a protective spasm in your muscles and fascia, and produces inflammation – which itself can lead to yet more pain. This creates a self-re-enforcing protective feedback loop that produces inflammation, spasm, and pain until your injury or condition has fully healed. 

This feedback loop becomes dysfunctional when inflammation gets “stuck” in the injured fascia – this fascia dysfunction prevents the “all clear” signal from being given to the body. This then creates long-term fascia dysfunction that can last for years. These long-term dysfunctional fascia spasms can exist before your knee injury but the knee injury itself can cause more to form. Dysfunctional fascial spasms can prevent correct movement of joints because they hijack your muscles, causing an abnormal twisting stress in the knee. Over time, this stress makes the area more prone to overuse, degenerative changes, and injury. Other areas of the body that when injured can increase stress in the knee include your entire spine and torso, hips, feet, and even the jaw and cranium.

This ability that fascia has to hijack muscles into protectively tightening for the long-term can’t be consciously overridden, thus, your body will naturally use back, hip, knee and foot muscles differently in daily activities to avoid stressing your injured fascia. These changes in muscle-use can cause increased force and pain in your knee joint, which with time or overuse can frequently lead to many common knee conditions (e.g., tendonitis, ACL injury) – without the need for a traumatic injury-causing event.

It turns out that fascia dysfunction isn’t just caused by injury; it can also be caused by surgery, postural issues, overuse, infection, or can even be secondary to an inflammatory diet. In fact, untreated fascia dysfunction is often a major reason why your knee condition developed in the first place, and why it became chronic.

A wide variety of fascia dysfunctions (e.g., fascia dysfunction of a vein, artery, nerve, bone, cartilage, and more) can cause and contribute to a specific knee condition. Normally it takes multiple long-term fascia dysfunctions in the knee, back, hip, or foot to cause a painful knee condition to develop. 

While the full role of fascia in injury and pain is becoming more widely known, many in the medical and therapeutic fields are still unaware of its significance or how to specifically address it when it’s dysfunctional. 

How Does Fascial Counterstrain Therapy Resolve Painful Knee Conditions?

Fascial Counterstrain Therapy resolves painful knee conditions because it is designed to fix a faulty pain-spasm-pain cycle that hasn’t been letting you heal. Fascial Counterstrain therapy is designed to relieve pain by releasing of the associated “stuck” inflammation and spasm, which provides long-lasting pain relief. This allows the body to let go of faulty guarding patterns and return back to a more properly-functioning, “factory settings,” painless state.

Fascial Counterstrain is able to fix fascia dysfunction by correctly unlocking the faulty pain-spasm-pain cycle in fascia. This helps the body to resolve many of the conditions that cause knee pain. Fascial Counterstrain therapy is actually able to find and appropriately treat fascia pain, spasm, and inflammation in any type of fascia (nerve, arterial, vein, and more) in any part of the body (knee, back, hips, feet, etc.) – which allows it to resolve many of the hard-to-find causes of knee pain.

The way Fascial Counterstrain therapy works is that it releases your body’s fascial tissue using precise and gentle positioning that is guided by the presence of specific painful Tender Points.

Fascia coats all of our anatomy from head to toe; it interconnects across all parts of the body (skin through to the center of our bones). Fascia is effectively a key part of your body’s ability to sense and protect itself, and responds with pain, spasm, and inflammation when a particular area is threatened or harmed.

Tender Points are small diagnostic points that, when painful, indicate the presence of a fascia spasm in a certain fascia tissue in a specific part of the body. Tender Points are similar to Trigger Points, but unlike Trigger Points that are located only in muscles, Tender Points can be located anywhere across the body. 

This simple solution can have profound effects for anybody with a condition or injury, even those with complex physical problems.

Three main benefits of Fascial Counterstrain Therapy: 

1) Pain reduction and elimination as “stuck” inflammation is effectively released.

2) Preserve your joints and reduce wear and tear by resolving improper joint stresses by releasing fascia spasm 

3) Slow down, stop, and even sometimes reverse degeneration of affected tissue by improving circulation of blood and lymphatic fluid (lymphatic fluid is key to your immune system and helps the healing process). 

All of these together give your body the healing and recovery tools to achieve optimal long-term healing and health.

Contact us to find out more about how Fascial Counterstrain therapy works and how it can help you recover from your knee problem.

Conditions Treated with Fascial Counterstrain Therapy

Fascial Counterstrain (FCS) therapy is a class-leading, hands-on method for the identification, assessment, and correction of one of the most common sources of pain and dysfunction in the body. It can help resolve chronic pain & inflammation, improve post-surgical outcomes, reduce healing times, reduce wear and tear across joints, & improve tissue health. Fascial Counterstrain therapy can substantially help many conditions, here is a list of a few, if you don’t see your condition ring us to find out if we can help.