Have Your Knees Become Victims?

In the beginning, when our knees start to hurt, we figure they'll get better on their own. And, sometimes, they seem to. But what if knee pain keeps coming back or seems to switch from one knee to the other? Right away, we think we should go have our knees checked. What we may not know is that our knees are not the "culprits" of the pain, they are the "victims"!

Picture this. What if you had to stand with one foot in a hole for an hour? Or had one foot up on a brick for a day? Or, if you had your toes up hill and your heels down hill for a week? It hurts me just thinking about it...

Imagine the stress on the body that these unbalanced postures would cause. Hips would be shoved to keep you upright. The spine would be forced to go crooked to keep the head erect. The results would vary as to what hurt worse, or what hurt first, but, very likely, the knees would end up involved. Luckily, few people are forced to endure any of the imbalanced postures mentioned above.

A frequent cause of postural imbalance that can put stress on the knees is a misalignment of the pelvis or spinal bones, called a vertebral subluxation. A vertebral subluxation is where one or more bones of the spine or pelvis are twisted or shoved forward and locked out of normal position. The body is forced to orient itself in an abnormal, imbalanced position, similar to trying to stand on uneven ground.

What we have found is that often, pain begins to develop near the area of the subluxation, maybe the mid or low back, and can travel down the leg. The natural thing for us to do is to favor the side in pain. We try to compensate by shifting all our weight to the other "good" leg. That leg bears the burden of too much of the body's weight and, often, the knee starts to hurt. We end up shifting our weight and the painful burden back and forth, whether we know it or not. If the subluxation is left uncorrected for any length of time, that overburdened knee may become swollen, inflamed, or even give out.

Another situation that can overburden the knees... (more)