What causes knee pain?

There are many complicated ways of looking at what causes knee pain? There are almost as many diagnoses to match the number of knees with knee pain and new ones are coming out everyday.

We can get into the specifics of a diagnosis like edema (aka swelling), arthritis (aka dehydrated joint), tendonitis (irritation of the tendon), etc but for the most part what causes knee pain fall into 2 primary categories.

• Something is broken or torn
• Nothing is broken or torn

Pay special attention to this. A solution for what causes knee pain is in its simplicity NOT in complexity. The establishment wants that because it keeps the knowledge and power out of your hands. I’ll speak more on this later

For now, let’s look at something in the knee that’s broken or torn. This is going to be diagnosed as a torn tendon, ligament, or meniscus. In more severe cases we are looking at a broken patella (knee cap) or the bones in the upper leg or lower leg have been broken through a fall or accident.

What is causing your knee pain in this case is primarily from the break or tear. At this point, I believe medical intervention is important, initially to assess and diagnose the injury and then to give the piece of mind to know exactly what’s being dealt with. Medical intervention is also important to know what options you have to address the causes of your knee pain from a western medicine perspective be it prescription drugs, pain killing shots or surgery.

I’m not opposed to a western medicine approach as long as I’m going into the situation with “eyes wide open.” Too many times the western medicine approach is the ONLY approach considered and ends up creating tunnel vision for both doctor and patient which limits the options and solutions for the body’s healing ability because not all possibilities for optimizing the body’s healing potential are taken into consideration.

What causes knee pain falls into 2 primary categories:

1.) Something is broken or torn

2.) Nothing is broken or torn

Let’s look at the situation where NOTHING is broken or torn. This means that you’ve gone to your doctor and had the initial assessment and diagnosis. You’ve gone for an X-ray, CT scan or MRI and the resulting diagnosis comes back negative OR there was something broken or torn in your knee, there’s been a surgery with time for your knee to heal AND you still have knee pain.

This is the category that leaves most doctors and knee pain sufferers scratching their heads trying to figure out what causes the knee pain. All that’s needed to find out a solution for what causes knee pain in the case where nothing is broken or torn is to look at your nervous system.

The brain is the command center of nervous system that gives directions and instructions to your muscles, bones, tendons and ligaments through how it feels. When there are nerves in the knee that are being irritated or squeezed, this sends a signal to the brain that the knee hurts and causes the knee pain.

The concept of what causes knee pain is actually very simple and straight forward. The trick is once you know what causes knee pain the solution becomes very clear. How do I get the pressure off of those nerves being squeezed causing the irritation and keeping me in pain.

A great mentor of mine, Terri Lee once told me once a long time ago. “You can’t begin straightening up the living room until you turn on the lights.”

This is why it’s so important to know what you’re dealing with first when the knee hurts.

If this is making sense to you then you’ll want to take our 1 minute knee pain assessment. If it’s not making sense then ask your questions below. I’ll get a response for you shortly.