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The 5 Essential Components Of Knee Pain Recovery – Part 4 (Stretching)

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This article is the fourth in a series of five articles covering the five essential components to knee pain recovery…

None of what I am going to share with you today is to be taken as medical advice. This approach is what I used to get myself out of knee pain that I learned over the past nine years.

These are truths as I know them. Use what you like and disregard the rest. If you have any concerns as to what you are to do, please consult your licensed health care professional.

Think about how most knee injuries happen. A short twist, turn, misstep, stopping too fast, or a quick jerk to the side suddenly sends a shooting burning pain in your knee.

Your body is tense and thus not flexible enough to adapt to this sudden movement.

Then it is very difficult to think about stretching, especially when your knee is painful, tight and swollen.

In trying to heal after an injury like this, none of the conventional stretching can actually get to the place your knee needs to be stretched in order to address the discomfort at its source.

Most of the stretching taught today will teach you to stretch your [Read more...]

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The 5 Pillars of Knee Pain Recovery – Exercise

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knee-anatomy.jpg

For the third part of this series I want to cover exercise, or specifically the exercises you do to address the pain in your knees as well as strengthen your knee joint.

None of what I am going to share with you today is to be taken as medical advice. This approach is what I used to get myself out of knee pain that I learned over the past nine years.

These are truths as I know them. Use what you like and disregard the rest. If you have any concerns as to what you are to do, please consult your licensed health care professional.

When you begin a movement, this movement is initiated by your muscles and is kept going by your tendons and ligaments.

Quick anatomy lesson: tendons connect muscle to bone and ligaments connect bone to bone.

It is so very important that you remember this when thinking about your knees.

The knee is a joint where two, actually three, bones are coming together to form the joint. The femur (the bone in your upper leg), the tibia, and the fibula (the bones in your lower leg).

The next time you go to a doctors’ office or to see your physical therapist, ask them to see an anatomy chart of the muscular system of the human body.

If you look at this chart of the lower half of the human body, you will find that there are no muscles to be found in and around the front of the knees.

Knee Anatomy

You might find this a little surprising; however, it’s the truth. And if you’re in front of a computer right now you can double-check me by doing a Google search on ‘muscle anatomy chart’ to see what I am talking about.

You can get a blow-up of it on your screen and you can see all the muscles are in red, and the tendons, the ligaments, and the bone are in white.

When you look at the anatomy chart in and around the front of the knees, it is primarily tendons, ligaments, and bone.

So this begs the question: How can you build up the muscles around the front of the knee to address you knee pain if there are not any muscles there?

The key here is to understand the tendons and the ligaments I mentioned a little bit ago. This is what truly needs to be strengthened in order to address the pain, tension, swelling, and discomfort in your knees.

You see, the way the body works in strengthening the tendons and the ligaments require you to first fatigue the muscles. Once the muscles are “out of the way,” then the real work begins.

It takes approximately seven seconds for muscles to fatigue.

If you are questioning me on this one, think of the last time you were at the gym and saw some guy trying to bench press a lot of weight. You know, “doing their max.”

They will first get the bar off the rack and bring it down to their chest before they begin to push the weight back up. If they don’t get it back up within a certain amount of time, usually seven seconds, then odds are they are not going to be able to push the weight up at all.

Go ahead and time it. One thousand one, one thousand two, one thousand three…all the way up to one thousand seven.

This is just as important when you are doing an exercise for your knees. However, in your case you are looking to fatigue the muscles so you can begin to build up the tendons and ligaments in and around the knees.

Another component of exercise in relation to building strength in the knee joint is to understand what I call “practical strength” or “dynamic strength.”

What I mean by practical strength or dynamic strength ties directly into how an exercise is performed. It must reflect how you move in real life in order for the exercise to really be applicable.

After my ACL reconstruction surgery, I went to physical therapy and for all intents and purposes everything went “well.” At the end of the 8 weeks my left leg was as strong as my right leg yet I still had lots of pain, tension, and discomfort in my knee.

I did the usual, leg extensions, leg curls, leg raises, and step ups to build up the strength in my legs and this, to a degree, was beneficial however it was not the “big picture.”

In actuality when moving in real life you rarely get up in a linear fashion. There is regular “dynamic movement” – getting up and pushing to the side at the same time. An example would be like getting out of a car.

So the exercises I did at the PTs made my leg stronger yet it was not practical for me to function in my life without the pain, tension, and discomfort in my knee.

Knee ExercisesBuilding practical or dynamic strength is key for you to get over your knee pain not only physically, also mentally to rid yourself of the fear of certain movements.

So dynamic strength must be slow and controlled to re-educate your nervous system. Your nervous system must understand that your knee is strong enough to handle the weight of your body and not give out anymore.

You will know when you “arrive” at this place because your body will not fear injuring your knee anymore.

Bill sustained a severe knee injury over ten years ago that required reconstructive surgery on his left knee. This experience led him on a path to figure out how to relieve the pain, tension, and discomfort in his knee as well as the rest of his body resulting from the knee injury and the subsequent surgery. He now teaches others how to relieve knee pain for themselves in their own bodies through education about water, nutrition, exercises, stretching, and breathing.

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The 5 Essential Components to Your Knee Pain Recovery Program – Part 2 (Nutrition)

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“The 5 Essential Components To Your Knee Pain Recovery Program”

by Bill Parravano

This is the second article in the series, “The 5 Essential Components To Your Knee Pain Recovery Program.”

None of what I am going to share with you today is to be taken as medical advice. This approach is what I used to get myself out of knee pain that I learned over the past ten years or so.

These are truths as I know them. Use what you like and disregard the rest. If you have any concerns as to what you are to do, please consult your licensed health care professional.

Everything, and I mean EVERYTHING, you put in your bodies has a pH level.

PH in the body is defined as ‘a measure of the acidity or alkalinity of a solution’.

If you were to do a Wikipedia search for pH, that is the definition you would find.

The scale generally goes from 1 being acidic, to 14 being alkaline.

Scientists will measure a pH being neutral at 7, so that’s halfway between 1 and 14. The more you move towards an acidic state, the lower the number gets.

As you go from 7, you go to 6, and 5, and 4, and 3, it’s getting more acidic, and the more like a battery acid solution.

The higher the number – moving towards 14, meaning going from 7 being neutral, going 8, 9, 10, 11 – a solution is considered more basic or alkaline.

The internal state of the body is ideally 6.4 for optimal health. The lower this number gets, the more acidic the internal state of the body gets, creating a condition for things to break down and decay.

This is a state where disease will set in.

Every bit of food you eat has an acid/alkaline measurement.

You guessed it: The more acidic food you eat, the more acidic state you create on the inside of your body.

Now, this is not to say never eat acidic foods, because there are acidic foods which are beneficial to your body.

However, what I am talking about is the fact that when an entire diet just consists of food that create an acidic state in the body.

It doesn’t matter how much water you drink, you may never be able to raise the pH level of your body high enough to create an internal state that will allow your body to begin to be able to heal itself.

The more natural a diet you can eat – and I mean, closer to the natural, original state food comes in – the better off you are.

Here are some examples: fresh vegetables as opposed to canned vegetables, fresh meats as opposed to meat heavily processed and/or canned, and fresh fruits as opposed to processed sugared fruits.

A good guide to go by when at a grocery store is to stay on the outer edges where all of the fresh food is that will spoil in a relatively short period of time.

This, of course, translates over to include the pain that is going on in your knees. This is crucial not only to your knee pain, but also to your overall health.

The more natural a diet you can eat, you create the conditions for your body to be able to begin to heal what is going on in your knees.

If these conditions are NOT created you can do all the exercises and stretching you want to help with your knee pain and your situation is NOT going to change.

You can take prescription drugs, or get pain killing shots, and your situation is NOT going to change.

You can get surgery however, if there is nothing broken or torn in your knees.

What is really being addressed?

You must get to an understanding of the underlying conditions that are creating what is happening with your knee pain.

Then you must apply that understanding and act upon it to gain wisdom with which you will begin to improve your quality of life without the knee pain.

Bill sustained a severe knee injury over ten years ago that required reconstructive surgery on his left knee. This experience led him on a path to figure out how to relieve the pain, tension, and discomfort in his knee as well as the rest of his body resulting from the knee injury and the subsequent surgery. He now teaches others how to relieve knee pain for themselves in their own bodies through education about water, nutrition, exercises, stretching, and breathing.

For more information on the topic of Knee Pain and to receive a FREE Special Report on Knee Pain.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Bill_Parravano

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The Knee Pain – Water Correlation

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The Knee Pain – Water Correlation
By Bill Parravano

None of what I am going to share with you today is to be taken as medical advice. This approach is what I used to get myself out of knee pain that I learned over the past 10 years or so. These are truths as I know them. Use what you like and disregard the rest. If you have any concerns as to what you are to do, please consult your licensed health care professional.

I would like to tell you a story, and it focuses around cars…

What do cars have to do with knee pain?

Just bear with me a moment and you will see how this all ties together.

I am going to guess that you probably have a car, and if you don’t then I will assume that you know pretty much how a car works.

Basically, everything in your car is dependent on everything else in your car in order for it to operate properly.

The engine needs to be in good working order.

Gas needs to be in the tank.

Tires need to be inflated.

You get the picture.

When something goes wrong in your car, it is important to take it to a mechanic who will diagnose what is going on with your car to be able to fix it.

Usually there is an indication of something on your dashboard that will be triggered to let you know that your car needs to be fixed.

Take your oil light, for example.

When that goes off it would be important for you or your mechanic to check underneath the hood to see if you need to put more oil to keep it running smoothly and avoid burning up your engine.

There may be something even more pressing which might be lurking underneath your hood as a result of your oil light coming on in your car.

Now, take that same scenario of the oil light coming on, and instead of looking underneath the hood to find out what is wrong, we go underneath the dash and pull the fuse for the “check oil light” and continue to drive your car like you always have.

What do you think would happen then?

That’s right, your car’s performance would probably decrease significantly to a point of breaking down where it might not even run.

That doesn’t make a whole lot of sense now, does it?

Like the old saying goes: “An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”

However, that is exactly what you do when you ignore what is going on in your knees, and when you experience knee pain, and decide to take pain killers to keep pushing yourself on.

This is exactly what I would like to talk to you about today with regards to your knees.

How can you look at your knee pain differently and begin to address what is going on “underneath the hood”?

Your body is the dashboard.

Like the dashboard on a car, your body’s nervous system lets you know when something is going on that needs to be paid attention to.

There are lots of indicators that many times are glazed over in an attempt to keep up with the busy schedules you maintain on a daily, weekly, monthly and even yearly basis.

Indicators like fatigue, tension, stiff necks, stiff backs, sore shoulders, tight jaws, headaches and countless others, including pain in your knees.

You can probably think of a few I haven’t covered you are feeling right now.

The list goes on and on.

The thing is, the one that most people finally pay attention to is pain.

Even then, we are taught to “suck it up,” “walk it off,” “ignore it,” or “just do it,” not to mention a whole host of other lines you have been brought up with since you were young.

Going back to the car analogy, at the point where you are experiencing pain you have already crawled underneath the dashboard and pulled the fuse for the “check oil light.”

You really have no idea what is happening to your body, and you are in a panic to find someone or something that will take away the pain.

Many times you see your only option is painkilling drugs and shots, or possibly even surgery.
This is the point where you are looking at damage control, choosing the lesser of two evils instead of making healthy, informed choices that have your best interests in mind.

I know you would like to make better choices; however, the deck is stacked against you.

Nowhere out there is anyone trying to help you recognize what your body is saying, let alone telling you what to do after you find out what it going on.

However, in looking at and understanding your body differently, there are some basic, fundamental things you can begin to do to get control of the situation and take back your life so it’s not overrun by your knee pain.

Water is key to all life here on this planet.

It flushes out toxins in your body and keeps your organ systems running smoothly.

If this percentage falls too low, you begin to bring yourself into danger of dehydration.

Some of the symptoms of dehydration of only up to 2% of your body’s water weight are as follows:
Thirst, loss of appetite, dry skin, skin flushing, dark-colored urine, dry mouth, fatigue or weakness, chills and head rushes, and that’s only 2%.

When that dehydration gets up to 5% you can expect to see increased heart rate, increased respiration, decreased sweating, decreased urination, increased body temperature, extreme fatigue, muscle cramps, headaches, nausea and tingling of the limbs.

Now, I am going to look at a water loss of 2% from a normal person, so let’s look at some real numbers on this. Let’s say you have a 200-pound person that, as we said before, is 80% water, which means you are looking at about 160 pounds worth of water weight.

A 2% loss in water will equal about 3.2 pounds in water weight!

During a normal day in normal humidity, a this 200-pound person will lose approximately 2.5 quarts of water. This water weight includes water loss from breathing, sweating and urinating.

Water weighs 8 pounds per gallon, so you are looking to lose about 5 pounds a day alone just in water weight from a normal person on a normal day.

Why am I telling you this?

Because when you do not drink enough water, the internal state of your body becomes more acidic, closer to that of battery acid.

It’s all tying back into that car story again.

This acidic state sits in different parts of your body depending on your physical makeup.

If this acidic state is hanging out in your knees, it begins to irritate the nerve endings in your knees, sending signals to your brain resulting in your experience of knee pain.

This is actually not a very new concept.

There has been a medical doctor who has been treating his patients and many of them with knee pain for over 20 years with just plain tap water…

So the solution……DRINK MORE WATER!

For more information about Knee Pain and to receive a Special Report on Knee Pain see: www.FREEKneePainReport.com

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