Yoga for Knee Pain… Really?

If you are suffering from chronic or acute knee pain, there are many different methods that the Phoenixville, PA knee pain doctor team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania may recommend to you in order to eliminate your pain or manage your pain to the fullest extent possible under the circumstances. Some of these methods may involve lifestyle choices, such as walking more frequently and losing weight. However, most patients who suffer from knee pain have already done everything that they can to adjust their lives to minimize the amount of pain that they feel. As a result, most of our recommendations tend to be things that patients haven’t already likely tried to integrate into their daily lives.

For example, we may recommend that a patient receive knee injections designed to improve knee mobility and function, while reducing inflammation and minimizing pain. This suggestion works in two ways. First, the injection itself can help to alleviate or even eliminate pain. Second, decreased pain, improved mobility, and improved function can allow a patient to lead a more active lifestyle, which can potentially improve knee pain under certain circumstances as well.

Similarly, the experienced team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania may recommend that a chronic or acute knee patient benefit from physical therapy sessions, fascial release techniques, and other motion or pressure-based treatments. These treatments, like knee injections, can benefit knee health directly and can result in supplemental benefits that may promote knee health over the long-term. Physical therapy exercises may involve yoga poses.

How Yoga Poses and Flows Can Help Knee Pain

When most people think about yoga and knees at the same time, they think about how uncomfortable it can be to engage in yoga poses that require the participant to bend in certain ways or to place pressure directly on the knees. Know that we would never recommend yoga poses as a form of physical therapy that would endanger a patient’s joint health or exacerbate preexisting knee, leg, hip, or other health conditions.

What many people do not realize, is that if approached in a certain way, a regular yoga practice can help to improve knee health and minimize knee pain. Similarly, if a patient is uninterested in participating in a regular yoga practice, specific yoga poses and flows can benefit knee health and minimize knee pain even when approached outside of a broader practice.

If this idea seems strange or counterintuitive to you, take a few minutes to hop on YouTube and search for yoga videos that focus on the knees. You may be surprised to learn how much certain yoga approaches can benefit mobility, flexibility, and the ability of the body to relax. Holding tension around the knees or in the hips can significantly impact knee health and knee pain. By integrating yoga positions into a physical therapy context in the right ways, the Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania can help you to achieve the results you desire as part of a broader knee management plan.

What Causes Knee Pain?

If you are experiencing acute pain, chronic pain, or chronic discomfort in one or both of your knees, consider connecting with a knowledgeable Collegeville, PA knee pain doctor at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania. Depending upon what is causing your pain, the severity of your pain, how long your pain has been plaguing you, and a host of other factors, we may be able to craft a treatment plan that could mitigate – or even eliminate – your pain.

It is important to understand that while no medical provider can guarantee the outcome of a treatment plan, working with an experienced knee pain specialist can better help to ensure that your quality of life is improved to the fullest possible extent under the circumstances. Knee pain can be difficult to live with. If knee pain is severe enough, it can be debilitating. Seeking treatment for your knee pain can potentially help you to sleep better, to become more active, and to generally have and more positive quality of life. Therefore, even though it can be difficult to get your hopes up with no guarantee of a result, it is important to know that you have done everything that you could to better ensure that if your knee pain is treatable that you have sought the assistance necessary to achieve the maximum favorable result possible under the circumstances.

Common Knee Pain Causes

Perhaps the most common cause of knee pain that we treat at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania is advancing age. No part of the body is immune from the passage of time. Unfortunately, wear and tear on joints tends to be a painful process that ultimately results and decreased mobility, decreased function, and an at least somewhat impaired quality of life. It has been estimated repeatedly but as many as 100 million Americans suffer from chronic knee pain. It is safe to say but the majority of sufferers experienced knee pain, at least to some degree, as a result of the aging process.

Other common sources of knee pain include excessive weight, trauma, chronic health conditions such as rheumatological inflammation, athletic injuries, and overuse injuries. Each of these causes needs to be treated in slightly different ways, as it is not effective to treat an athlete who has torn something in their knee with the same approaches as one would treat a sedentary individual in their 80s who suffers from chronic osteoarthritis.

Can Knee Pain Be Treated Effectively?

Most of the time, knee pain can be effectively mitigated, managed, and may even be eliminated if proper treatments are administered by those who know what they’re doing. For example, our practice has witnessed excellent results when certain knee pain patients have been administered knee injections. Although we cannot guarantee that our approaches will eliminate your knee pain, the dedicated team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania will do our utmost to ensure the most favorable treatment outcomes possible under the unique circumstances that you’re facing. 

Get to Know Your Knees

If you’re struggling as a result of knee pain, it may benefit you to speak with a Pottstown, PA knee surgeon that locals trust. By scheduling a consultation with Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, you can voice your concerns, ask questions, and learn about your treatment options.

If you’re the kind of person who likes to prepare for consultations in order to make the most of your valuable time, you may want to familiarize yourself with some of the basic vocabulary and concepts related to your knees. That way, when we are explaining our recommendations and how we reached those specific recommendations, you’ll be placed in an excellent position to ask informed questions about your anatomy and how it might be affected by various treatment options available to you.  

Knee Anatomy

The knee is a hinge joint located between some of the longest bones in the human body. The knee is made up of the bones that meet to form your knee, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage. The complex anatomy of the human knee helps to explain why knees get injured so often. There are, quite simply, so many things that can go wrong that can affect the health, mobility, and function of the knee joint. Bones break, ligaments tear, elements dislocate… by understanding how all of these elements work together for your benefit, you can help to understand why certain treatment options may or may not effectively treat whatever is going on with your knee in particular.

There are four bones that meet to form the knee joint. Your patella is your kneecap. Your femur runs upward to help form your thigh. Your tibia and fibula run downward to help form your shin. When these bones fracture, dislocate, or chip, the stress can spell trouble for your knee. Similarly, your knee can suffer when the ligaments that attach your bones to each other tear or otherwise become compromised.

Ligament and tendon tears are notoriously painful. The team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania regularly helps patients to manage ligament and tendon issues in order to improve flexibility, mobility and function. Whereas ligaments attach bones to one another, tendons attach muscle to bone.

Finally, your knee relies on cartilage to serve as shock absorbers within the knee joint and allow it to glide smoothly. When cartilage tears or breaks down, the integrity of the knee joint and its functionality can be compromised. The team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania has discovered that cartilage and/or bone degeneration pain and inflammation can often be treated effectively through the use of knee injections. While no provider can guarantee the result of a specific treatment, we have witnessed that many patients who suffer from osteoarthritis, other inflammatory conditions, and degeneration of tissue due to advancing age, trauma, or defect, often see great results with this particular therapy. Connect with our team today to learn more and to discuss your options to manage your knee pain.

Knee Injections for Osteoarthritis

If you suffer from osteoarthritis in one or both of your knees, you may benefit from speaking with a Phoenixville, PA knee pain doctor that local patients trust. At Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we have chosen to highlight the chronic condition known as osteoarthritis in our company’s title because our primary treatment offered is often so beneficial for osteoarthritis patients.

No doctor can guarantee the success of a treatment plan. If you have spoken to anyone else about your knee pain and they have guaranteed that the results of their approach will mitigate or eliminate your pain, you need to seek a second opinion. Our team takes great pride in offering a form of treatment that has proven to be life-altering for many patients. However, there is no single treatment approach to knee pain that can be guaranteed by anyone. As a result, it is important to speak with somebody who will be honest with you about the potential benefits and potential drawbacks of any given approach. At Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we will always be honest with you and will always treat you with the respect and concern that you deserve.

Could You Benefit From Knee Injections?

Our practice offers a knee injection treatment that uses substances natural to a patient’s body in order to achieve results. We believe in this approach because synthetic treatments too often result in rejection of the treatment substance or a reaction. By using a substance that isn’t foreign to the body, we mitigate those risks to the fullest extent possible.

We also take great pride in another aspect of our knee injection process. All too often, medical providers who offer knee injections fail to place those injections properly. Instead of using an ultrasound or other highly technical diagnostic tool to place the knee injection where it has the greatest potential to do the most good, they go in blind. This means that they simply place the injection wherever they suspect that it will do some good. There is an old saying that close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. For us, close enough isn’t good enough. We are aware that approximately 40% of blind injections do patients no good whatsoever because they have been placed improperly. We will never administer an injection unless we have verified exactly where that injection needs to be placed for maximum effect.

Osteoarthritis patients tend to uniquely benefit from the knee injection procedure that we administer both due to the nature of their medical condition and due to the ways in which knee injections function. Osteoarthritis of the knee involves disintegration of the cartilage around a joint and/or the underlying bone near the joint. Knee injections promote repair and healing in ways that benefit osteoarthritis patients uniquely. To learn more about whether you may be a good candidate to receive restorative knee injections, connect with our knowledgeable team at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania today; we look forward to speaking with you.

Knee Health for Runners

If you are a runner and you are struggling with knee pain, connect with a Collegeville, PA knee pain doctor Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania to discuss your situation. Depending upon the circumstances that are causing your pain, we may be able to help you minimize, manage, or even eliminate your pain.

Running Health – Knee Basics

There is a common misconception that running is bad for the knees. On the contrary, many studies have indicated that runners benefit from this high intensity activity in that running is protective of knee arthritis later in life. With that said, the repetitive use of knees during running can take its toll. Although running itself strengthens joints and helps to prevent arthritis, there are many ways in which running can lead to knee injuries and chronic or acute knee pain.

Preventing Knee Pain While Running

At Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we are not simply concerned with treating pain as it occurs. We are concerned with preventing pain from occurring in the first place. As a result, we believe that it is important for runners to be aware of the ways in which they can help to prevent knee pain due to running. For example, it is important to wear shoes that fit, that take into account any unique challenges that you may have with your gait, and that will absorb shock while running so that your knees don’t take the brunt of this activity.

It is also critically important to pay attention to your posture, your body mechanics, and your overall form when running. No amount of therapy can make up for poor form. Similarly, no amount of proactive or reactive treatment can make up for overtraining or rushed training. Trained smart not unnecessarily hard. It is also important to stretch properly, to rest when you feel an injury starting to form, to seek medical guidance if something genuinely hurts, and to listen to your body. Finally, you may benefit from wearing a knee strap that can help to stabilize your knee and prevent swelling and discomfort.

Treating Knee Pain Related to Running

The ways in which you should approach managing knee pain will depend upon the type of knee pain that you are experiencing, how severe the pain is, when it began, what makes it worse, and any underlying medical conditions that you may have. For example, you shouldn’t take aspirin to alleviate knee pain if your doctor has told you to avoid blood thinners. You may benefit from knee injections, but not if your condition is so advanced that only surgical intervention will make any lasting difference to your quality of life.

When you meet with our experienced team, you can discuss the particulars of your situation and receive personalized guidance as to how you can best go about managing your knee pain and preventing knee pain from occurring in the future. Contact Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania to learn more. We look forward to speaking with you.

Does Weight Loss Cure Knee Pain?

Does Weight Loss Cure Knee Pain?

If you suffer from chronic knee pain and have been advised that the way to treat that pain is to lose weight, you may benefit from speaking with a trusted Pottstown, PA knee surgeon at Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania. It is a good idea to seek a second opinion under this circumstance, because weight loss does not tend to be a panacea when it comes to managing knee pain. Additionally, the advice to lose weight may help your knee pain over time, but this advice will do nothing to alleviate the knee pain that you are currently experiencing on a daily basis.

One of the primary reasons why it is unhelpful to tell people who are struggling with their weight and who are struggling with knee pain as a result of extra stress being placed on their joints to simply lose weight is that until weight has come off the body, it can be difficult to exercise enough on painful knees to achieve an optimal calorie deficit. It is partially for this reason and partially for the reason that no one should have to suffer through pain until they hit their target weight that it is important to integrate weight loss into a broader knee pain management plan if a patient is overweight, but to avoid having weight loss serve as the only knee pain management recommendation given to the affected patient.

Crafting a Broader Knee Pain Management Plan

At Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we treat patients as individuals with unique needs. We understand that not every treatment plan will work in the same ways for every patient. Some knee pain patients find profound relief after receiving knee injections and attending physical therapy. Other patients find that their need for surgical intervention cannot be overcome by a desire to avoid having surgery. These patients discover that treatments that benefit other patients simply do not give them the desired results that they so crave. Under these circumstances, surgery may indeed be the best option.

If you are suffering from chronic knee pain and you are overweight, it is important to work with a medical care provider who will both honor the fact that losing weight will take some strain off of your joints, but also that you are in pain and in need of effective pain management right now. If a provider is not willing to treat your pain and to help you become as mobile and as functional as you can be in order to be in a better position to lose weight and improve your quality of life, it is time to seek out a second opinion of a provider who will treat you as a whole human being. It can be easy to get discouraged when health care providers treat weight loss as if it is a cure all. Know that when you work with Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, we will never project such narrow-minded thinking upon you or any of our patients.

Foreclosure, Chapter 7, and Chapter 13

If you are hoping to resolve the risk of foreclosure by filing for bankruptcy, there are some things that you should know. There are two primary kinds of personal bankruptcy opportunities that are offered to the American public. Each of these options is utilized by millions of Americans each year filing as individuals or filing as married couples in a joint capacity. One of these opportunities offers a significant chance to stop the risk of foreclosure. The other option generally does not. However, this alternative option has many benefits worth considering, so it is important not to dismiss it as an option until you have spoken with an attorney about your unique debt challenges.

Chapter 13 Bankruptcy

As an experienced foreclosure lawyer – including those who practice at The Law Offices of Ronald I. Chorches – can confirm, Chapter 13 bankruptcy offers many homeowners a viable opportunity to save their homes from a risk of foreclosure. Chapter 13 bankruptcy, which is sometimes referred to as “reorganization bankruptcy” or “wage earner’s bankruptcy” is an option that is available to just about everyone.

If you choose to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you will benefit immediately from the protections afforded by a legal resource known as the automatic stay. Except under rare circumstances, the automatic stay will keep your lender from acting upon existing collection efforts and from initiating new collection efforts until your case has either been resolved or dismissed. Meaning, if you successfully file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy, you will be granted time to catch up on your outstanding payments without your lender breathing down your neck or repossessing your house.

Note that you will need to fulfill the terms of your repayment plan to keep the protections of the automatic stay active. If you miss payments on your Chapter 13 bankruptcy plan over its three-to-five year lifespan, you will lose the protections of the automatic stay and foreclosure actions can be started or restarted.

Chapter 7 Bankruptcy

Filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy will likely only help you avoid foreclosure for a few weeks or a few months until your case is resolved or dismissed. While Chapter 7 filers benefit from the automatic stay, their cases are resolved so quickly that the automatic state does not afford them much time to catch up on their missed payments. With that said, there are so many benefits to filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy that it is an option worth considering if you are eligible for this form of debt relief.

Different Causes Of Knee Pain

There are many different things that can trigger knee pain. Some of the most common come from injuries or disease. It is always important to see an orthopedic knee doctor, like a knee doctor from Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, at the onset of any pain. Your doctor may want to run several tests on you to determine what is causing your pain, then can come up with treatments to fix it. Here are some of the most common causes of knee pain.

Disease Can Cause Knee Pain

There are common illnesses that cause chronic knee pain. Some of the most common are arthritis and osteoporosis. These can be treated with medication and, in severe cases, with surgery to help make your knees stronger and better lubricated so that they can move more easily.

Injuries Can Cause Knee Pain

If you hurt yourself you may have lasting knee pain. This needs to be checked out as soon as possible so that you can have the best possible chance of healing from your injuries. Do not wait to get treated after you are injured. Not only will this give you the best potential to heal from the injuries sustained, but it will also allow you to seek compensation from the at fault party for the accident. If you sustained injuries, you may need something from the range of physical therapy all the way to surgery.

Aging May Increase Knee Pain

Sometimes, as people get older, they get more aches and pains. This can be because of diseases like arthritis or osteoporosis, or could be just from different parts of your body breaking down some. It is important to find the root cause and treat it, rather than just putting a bandaid on your problems.

Contact a Doctor at the Onset of Pain

You should reach out to a local orthopedic knee doctor as soon as you are able to in order to diagnose your knee pain and begin to treat it. The sooner you catch it, the faster you will be able to try to heal. Your doctor will likely have several suggestions depending on your diagnosis. It is important to be open minded and willing to try several different avenues to find healing. Your doctor wants to see your pain get better and will want to help in any way he or she is able. Do not wait to reach out to a doctor today so you can begin getting the help you need for your knees.

Different Medical Professionals To See About Knee Pain

There are many different types of medical professionals who can help you find relief for your knee pain. One of those professionals would be an orthopedic knee doctor, like one from Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania. An orthopedic knee doctor is crucial to have on your team no matter what other types of treatments you want to try. He or she can make sure you know what is going on medically with your knees and how to treat them to facilitate healing.

You May See a Physical Therapist

Depending on what is causing your pain, physical therapy may be able to help. Your physical therapist will evaluate what is going on with your body and determine a good treatment plan from there. They will give you homework to do every single day to help make your joints and muscles stronger and more mobile. This can really help in managing pain. A good PT may also have electrodes that vibrate gently and stimulate the knees, promoting blood flow to the area and healing.

A Nutritionist Can Help You with Lifestyle Changes

If you are overweight the excess weight on your joints can cause anywhere from mild to intense pain on your joints. You need to lose weight to begin promoting healing. This will make the movement on your joints much smoother and really help you begin to feel better. You may also begin taking new supplements that you need for whatever is wrong with your knees. For example, if you are having issues with your bones, it will be important to begin getting enough calcium to promote healthy bone growth.

You Could Seek Assistance from a Chiropractor

Chiropractic care is not only centered around the spine. It is all about creating alignment within the entire body. Sometimes, it can help with knee pain. It is crucial to get approval for this kind of treatment, as it can be harmful to certain conditions like arthritis in the knees. A chiropractor also needs to know about all of your conditions in order to begin getting better.

Contact an Orthopedic Knee Doctor Today

You will only begin feeling better after you start getting treatment for your ailments. You need to seek help from an experienced doctor so that you can begin to heal. Your knees are an important part of your body that helps you do many things throughout the day. It is important to take care of them so you can walk and move around freely for a long time. Keeping your knees in good health will be crucial in staying independent as you age.

How to Make Your Knee Pain Better

It can be difficult to function while you are in pain. If you or someone you care about is struggling with knee pain, you need to reach out to a knee doctor first. He or she may end up referring you to a knee surgeon, like a surgeon from Premier Osteoarthritis Centers of Pennsylvania, to help you come up with a permanent solution to your pain. It is crucial that you know exactly what is going on with your knees before figuring out a way to treat them. Your doctor will likely have you start out with physical therapy and lifestyle changes, then move to getting surgery if it is still needed after trying to treat your knees in other ways.

Going to Physical Therapy 

Physical therapy is a great tool for pain management because it can help teach people how to live with their pain issues and make healing at home possible. By giving exercises, stretches, and a routine to do at home, a physical therapist can make it easy to help yourself heal in the comfort of your own home. This means if your pain starts to flare when you are alone you will know how to handle it.

Change Your Lifestyle

It is crucial to eat well and maintain a healthy weight for your knee pain. This will make it much easier to be comfortable and hopefully improve your knee pain. You may want to add certain vitamins and supplements to your diet to help with the inflammation of your knees and strengthen both muscle and joint health. It is important to always be healthy, but it is especially crucial if you need to keep an eye on your health and wellbeing.

Contact a Knee Doctor Today

You need to reach out to an experienced knee doctor at the onset of any pain. This will allow you to figure out what is wrong so you can begin getting better. It is important to find the root cause so that you can treat it properly. In many cases, you may be able to start with gentler treatments like physical therapy and acupuncture, but if you have an underlying illness like arthritis or osteoarthritis, these may not be the best options. You may need medication and possibly even surgery. Your knee doctor will know of an experienced knee surgeon in the area who can tell you what the best option for you may be. The surgeon might suggest trying alternative methods of healing, but may also think that surgery is the right option for you.