Who Is At Risk For Knee Pain | Chiropractor for Knee Pain in Oxnard, CA
Hello, I’m Dr. Sean Delaney with Kalani Total Health Center. Did you know that knee pain affects about 1/3 of the population in the United States every year? Did you also know that the knee is considered as what we consider a weight bearing joint. And that’s very important to understand because your body weight in some of the activities you’re doing increases or decreases the amount of pressure being applied to the knee.
The Effects of Body Weight and Gravity on Knee Joints
For every one for let’s just take your body weight, every pound of your body weight, the amount of stress being applied to your knee is four times that amount. So let’s just say I weighed 200 pounds, that means every step I take is 800 pounds of pressure being applied to my knee joint. This is why if I’m overweight, and I have knee pain, it is important, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to lose some weight. So if you were to lose 10 pounds, that’s 40 pounds of pressure, write off your knee joint. And just as a side note, it’s six pounds of pressure off your hip, which is another weight bearing joint.
So you figure your hip is six times your body weight, stress your knee is four times whatever your body weight of stress being applied to your knee with every step you’re taking. Another interesting factor, since we’re talking about load on the knee is the stress that’s applied to your kneecap when you are going down. So there’s a lot of people report, when they have knee pain and the pain increases when they try to go up or down stairs, while going down the stairs when you are descending, that can be up to five times the amount of your body weight, that could be pretty significant.
Your Overall Health and How it Affects Your Knee Joint
So that’s one of the best things you can do if you’re overweight, and have knee pain is to figure out a way to lose some weight, as well as you know, getting evaluated and getting on a proper treatment plan. Another thing about the knee people may not realize and it might catch a lot of people by surprise is that every unique I mean to say that your knee cap is specific to you. That means it’s just like your fingerprints, it’s just like your retinas in your eye. It is what we call a Biometric which means we can identify you by your kneecap. The drawback is or the thing about it is nobody cuts their kneecaps out to fully figure out a way to identify somebody else, or to have it monitored, or that’s not even a good term monitor to have it measured. So therefore we can use it later. Like with your teeth, or with your fingerprint, it’s a little bit more accessible.
Another thing about knees that people may not realize is if you’re diabetic, in general, being diabetic is going to increase your risk of injury because of the way the body responds to things. But when you are have type two diabetes, that makes you more likely like two times more likely to develop osteoarthritis, which is one of the bone starts to change shape, and you get a breakdown of the cartilage that cushions the joint. So therefore, every time you do an activity or you take steps or you walk first, in this case, dealing with the knee is going to increase that pain in that pressure. So that’s something else we want to monitor and be on top of.
Your Shoes and Knee Pain
And one of the biggest things that people may not even realize is the shoes you’re wearing. Wearing the wrong shoes can increase the pressure on your kneecap because you’re wearing shoes that are worn out shoes that weren’t art weren’t designed for the activity or doing or shoes that just weren’t made for the type of flip you have. With a lot of times you see this in runners, they just buy a shoe off the shelf, go out, start running, and then start having pain because the shoe was forcing them to over pronate which is putting increasing the stress on the inside part of your knee. Who knows? Let me say who knows why or what without being evaluated. The average person just you know, we just buy things and we like them. We just go use them. And we don’t even have a tribute. That is the reason for the problems that we’re having.
Give us a call. Come in for an appointment. Let us help you figure out why you’re having knee pain and let’s figure out a treatment plan to get you out of pain. Once again. I’m Dr. Sean Delaney with Kalani Total Health Center, your one stop Holistic Health shop, mahalo!
