There was a sobering statistic in the March issue of The American Physical Therapy Association’s newsletter PT in Motion about knee related movement pain that all people should be aware of. 8.5% is the number and you may even find yourself in this group.
In 2014 8.5% of the population of the United States admitted that it was “very difficult or impossible to stoop, bend or kneel.” 10.2 % of the respondents who were female said this fact applied to them while 6.6% of males shared this information. The CDC was the source of these stats for their National Health Interview Survey. While this was just a slice of the populous, the underpinnings of this are alarming indeed.
We all live with nagging annoyances for longer than we need to. Whether it’s a lingering toothache, a ringing in your ears, digestive issues, or interrupted sleep, there’s something about all these things which is true; eventually they are taken care of. What could have been a cavity removal may become a root canal but eventually the pain goes away.
So why do we suffer for so long in silence when physical therapy can help alleviate what ails you?
Stooping, keeling and bending are all things which we should be able to do without pain. Human beings bend and kneel hundreds of times in an ordinary day. Why would anyone want to live through these mundane tasks with stinging pain when they don’t have to?
Physical therapy can help those in pain by assessing your biomechanics and assuring that the body is moving with optimal structural fluidity. The knee is a complex joint, designed to move smoothly. The ideal specimen will have aligned harmony in their knee. When the muscles, ligaments and bones come together it is a beautiful thing.
Seeing that harmony to fruition is a bit like sliding a thread through a needle; even a slight bump in the wrong way can throw off alignment. When it comes to fluidity in the knee even a tight muscle can be a big problem.
Imagine walking around on a shoe with a crooked heel; that heel is bound to break. Those who stand up and sit down or bend or stoop or kneel with poor knee alignment are just asking for trouble.
If you have been feeling the pinch, groaning at the stretch or soldiering through when something is hurting, you don’t need to be brave anymore. Physical therapy can put you back on the road to well-being and help make your pain a thing of the past. One of the Upper West Side’s best locations for physical therapy is Miccass Physcial Therapy. Our full team of experts can help you conquer your pain whether it originates in complex movements or rudimentary pain like sitting and bending over!
