Suffering from knee pain can have serious effects on your quality of life. Knees are essential even for the most simple of movements, like walking or going up stairs, or even getting in and out of bed.
Knee pain can be so severe in some cases that those basic movements are extremely painful and limited. Sadly, knee pain affects one in four adults and affects everyone at some point in their lifetime and for many causes that are not always related to old age.
Optimum Health Rehab’s Suwanee providers work to administer the most up-to-date techniques for clients suffering from knee pain with an approach that targets the root cause rather than just the symptoms.
Our approach is geared toward using drug-free techniques that carry minimal side effects and help you manage your pain—and possibly recover as soon as possible.
Don’t wait and continue to suffer with knee pain. Let us design a custom knee pain treatment plan for you made to help you manage your pain.
Call (678) 546-0550 or schedule your initial assessment in Suwannee through our online form today.
What Causes the Need for Knee Pain Treatment?
Knee pain can be caused by an array of issues. Like many other parts of the human body, injuries, age, and illness can cause pain in the knees. In some cases, knee pain can also be a combination of issues:
- Osteoarthritis
- Rheumatoid Arthritis
- ACL and PCL Tears
- Tendon injuries
- Cartilage Injuries and other disorders
Healthy knees are essential to function and complete daily tasks and work. It can significantly impact those who work standing up or require them to sit for an extended period.
Sadly, most adults experience knee pain at some point in their lifetime and find that when they go to a doctor, it can be quickly dismissed and told to treat with over-the-counter drugs.
Trauma To the Knee
One of the most common causes of knee pain is due to injury. Whether that is a sudden blow, change in direction while running or walking, or overuse while playing sports, trauma can occur and cause a lot of pain.
These kinds of sudden movements and impacts can cause serious injuries like dislocation of the knee cap, fractures, torn ligaments, or meniscus. Patients are encouraged to always complete a warm-up before exercising or playing sports and to use protective gear when needed to prevent these injuries from happening.
Medical Conditions Causing Knee Pain
Trauma is not the only cause of knee pain. In many cases knees hurt because of an issue related to age, weight, illness, infection, or degenerative medical condition.
Since 1971 knee pain cases have risen by 65%, and studies show that this increase in cases is due to increased obesity. Obesity leads to multiple medical complications, including knee pain due to the additional stress placed on your joints.
As part of caring for knee health, clients are encouraged to incorporate a healthy diet to maintain their optimal body weight.
Obesity is not the only cause of medical conditions in the knees. Age plays a huge role in contributing to knee pain.
With conditions like osteoarthritis, it is not surprising that the older population faces knee pain more frequently. Arthritis and similar illnesses are considered to be degenerative tissue disorders, and they are not curable, but with the right technique can be managed.
Other conditions involve auto-immune conditions like Rheumatoid Arthritis, bacterial infections, and knee overuse.
Lifestyle Habits Contributing to Increased Risk of Knee Pain
Your lifestyle habits can have a huge impact on your health, including the health of your knees. Those with knee pain are encouraged to exercise frequently, prevent a sedentary lifestyle, and maintain a healthy diet throughout to help prevent knee pain from happening.
Chronic Knee Pain
Like most medical chronic conditions, knee pain becomes chronic when it lasts longer than three months. Chronic knee pain can result from an untreated injury from many years ago or old age, but as time has passed, the cartilage in the knee has eroded.
Even if just a portion of the cartilage in your knees has faded away, it will cause pain each time the knee is moved.
How Optimum Health Rehab in Suwanee Can Help
Doctors are quick to prescribe over-the-counter drugs and surgery to address the causes of knee pain. While this solution works for some patients, it is not uncommon for many to seek alternative treatments to address the root cause of the problem before going under the knife.
At Optimum Health Rehab’s approach to resolving knee pain is to identify the root cause of the problem. We initiate our approach by running diagnostics, combining a physical assessment, questionnaire and imagining to determine why you are in pain.
The kinds of imaging can be one or a combination of the following tests depending on the severity of your pain:
- MRIs
- CT Scans
- X-Ray
Once the results are received and analyzed, our experienced providers will construct a treatment program tailored to your needs and recovery.
Administering Chronic Knee Pain Treatments
Most doctors will begin treatment for chronic knee pain with rest and over-the-counter anti-inflammatory drugs like Advil or Aleve, but these are just temporary solutions that mask the pain. In the most severe cases, they will recommend surgery.
While surgery and knee replacement can resolve the problem of chronic knee pain like osteoarthritis, it carries risks that, for some patients, can outweigh the rewards and can even be life-threatening (due to age and other medical complications).
As an option before undergoing surgery, physical therapy is one of the best ways to manage chronic knee pain. Your provider at Optimum Health Rehab will design a plan that includes different techniques to help manage the pain, from stretches and exercises to massages and cold and hot compresses.
Treating Knee Pain
Optimum Health Rehab’s approach to treating knee pain is non-invasive and drug-free. After completing a diagnostics, your provider will derive a combination of treatments and create a program designed to treat your pain, given its cause.
Treatment plans normally consist of a combination of regenerative medicine, like PRP injections, physical rehabilitation, neurological treatments, and electrical stimulation. These strategies help with treating the pain and teaching clients techniques to help alleviate their pain.
Regenerative Medicine
Regenerative medicine is a therapy approach that uses your own body’s natural healing ability and potential to combat knee problems. Treatments like PRP, or Platelet Rich Plasma, are used for patients with torn muscles or ligaments, arthritis, tendinitis, and other kinds of injuries.
The plasma used for this treatment is collected to contain high levels of growth hormones and other proteins that encourage the body’s natural healing processes.
Platelet-rich plasma comes from your own blood. Once collected as a concentrated dose, it is injected directly into the source of your knee pain for almost immediate results.
Using Platelet-rich plasma helps administer those healing factors directly where they are needed most.
Some patients see improvements in their knee pain as soon as a few days after receiving Platelet-rich plasma injections; however, this can vary from person to person.
Physical Rehabilitation
Physical rehabilitation is a great option for reducing pain by strengthening the surrounding muscles to support the problem area. This can be accomplished by teaching stretches and exercises designed to target those surrounding areas.
Hot and cold treatments are also commonly used as part of the physical rehabilitation program.
As you go through your sessions, you will be asked to complete various exercises, like walking on a treadmill or hopping on one leg. These exercises are to help your provider learn more about your limits, strengths, and weaknesses and adjust your treatment plan as needed.
Apart from these exercises at our center, clients are also taught stretches and exercises that aim to help the surrounding tissues of the knee regain strength so that they can properly support the knees.
Electrical Stimulation
Electrical stimulation and a portable device like a TENS unit may be included in your sessions. These strategies are geared to help relieve you of your discomfort by interfering with pain signals between the brain and nerves.
Studies have shown that different kinds of electrical stimulation can help with knee stiffness and pain, especially in patients coping with arthritis. Electrical stimulation has proven to be valuable in many cases in treating knee pain.
Neurological Treatments
Neurological testing and other qualitative exams provide keen insight into determining the severity of injury to the nerves in the body, specifically those that contribute to knee pain. Results will provide details on reflex time, nerve conduction velocity, and other areas controlled by your nervous system.
Depending on your diagnosis and the results of your testing, it can help shape the best treatment plan for you. In many cases, patients choose to work simultaneously with a neurologist who can also track their progress and ensure that they are trending towards improvement while going through your designed treatment program.
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Tackle Your Knee Pain with Help From Our Suwannee Team
Knee pain can prevent you from completing even the most basic tasks, making even the most simple of responsibilities difficult to accomplish. Pain in the knees can be so severe that it can limit movement allowing you to walk, stand up, or even get into bed—actions that are needed to address your basic needs.
At Optimum Health Rehab, you can expect quality care and expertise when handling your knee pain. Let’s tackle your knee pain together. Call us at (678) 546-0550 or complete our online form to get started.