Physio on ross - Chronic knee pain & weakness report
FOUR Mostly Unknown Biological Facts You Need To Discover About Knee “Treatments” If You Want To Slow, Stop or Even Reverse Their Downhill Slide As You Get Older.
And Why The Best Choice May Be The Slowest Path Available – A 12 Week Program.
Hello, this is Brett Cunningham. I know this is a long document to read, but it is very important to understand some not-so-obvious facts about your knees, legs and even your future quality of life. You already have certain knowledge and expectations about what is possible with your knees. My purpose in this Report is to cover four main points.
They are:
There great news about recovering the capabilities of your knees, if you are willing to follow the slow and boring path to recovery. Before we get to that -what makes your knees so important for your health – and it is not the reasons you think!
People are often surprised to discover that knee problems can lead to an acceleration of the problems of “aging”. It is obious when you think about it.
You most likely think of your knee problem as just the pain, or the ache, or the annoyance of not being able to do things you really would like to do. Maybe it is the sleep disturbance. Maybe it is because you have to take pills. Maybe you are just waiting for it to get bad enough for an operation.
What could be more important than pain and inflammation? Or being unable to do things? The answer is related to ability to move. The answer is that:
Without Knee Function You Begin To Stop Using An Absolutely Vital Part Of Circulatory System Called The “Foot and Calf Pump”
A key part of your anatomy is called the “Foot and Calf Pump“. It is known also as the “Venous Muscle Pump“. That does not sound too impressive, but after we talk just a little about how your body moves fluids – you will see how important it really is.
First, you already know that your heart pumps your blood in pipes called “arteries“.
Arteries come FROM your heart and TAKE blood to all parts of your body. As the arteries get closer and closer to your muscles (for example), they branch out and get smaller and smaller. When they reach your muscle the pipes are extremely small, so that the gases can move easily from the blood in the pipe to the muscle cells.
Past this point – blood is transported AWAY from the muscle in pipes called VEINS.
The thing about veins is that the blood is no longer moved by the pumping of your heart as it is taken away from the muscles.
So how does the blood in your veins get back to your heart and lungs again?
One source of movement is BREATHING. As your lungs expand and your diaphragm moves they create a suction force that helps your veins PUSH that blood back toward your heart. Pretty cool!
The other way that your blood is pumped in veins is when your muscles move. Your muscles are designed to “spurt” the blood in your veins when you use them.
Again, very cool. But here is the problem you are starting see. The upper parts of the vein flow of your body is well serviced just by breathing. It is not very far to pump in the upper body, and some parts it is a downhill flow so gravity helps too like the blood from your head, neck and shoulders.
But. What about the blood that has gone right down to your feet?
That blood has a long way to go in your veins, and it is all UPHILL unless you are lying down.
The pumping of your leg muscles, especially your calves, is so important it is called your “second heart“.
This heart only works when you take a step. Your body weight then “squeezes” the veins in the bottom of your foot. Then you lift your heel and your calf muscles then spurt the blood into and up your calf. And each step pushes that blood further up your legs, through your thighs and up through your guts to your (first) heart.
This is amazing! The blood in your VEINS from the lower half of your body is not moved by your heart, but by the action and pumping from the motion of your feet! While this is an awesome design – you can see that the circulation of your bottom half RELIES on the movement of your feet and ankles.
And those pumps only work when you MOVE the muscles.
All the muscles do some of this work, but the most essential is the FOOT AND CALF PUMP.
If you do not use this sufficiently, the blood will GET STUCK in your lower body. The veins will over time fail to cope with that overflow. The “valves” will blow and leak. You will see swollen and varicose veins, and purple stains on your skin. Your legs will ache. The waste products from your muscles will not be cleared and will hang around – causing release of inflammation. The muscle, joints and other cells of your legs will not be able to access the oxygen and nutrients they need for maintenance.
Without sufficient movement, you will have a “swamp” starting to form because your “second heart”, your foot and calf pump, is not in play.
Also in many people your body will try to help by working your heart harder and squeezing the blood pipes. Your blood pressure will be messed up.
This is sounding pretty bad, but there is good news coming! Although first we need to cover just one more important factor.
It is about another bodily system that has to be drained, called the “lymphatic system”.
Without Pumping Movement of The Foot & Calf Pump – Your Lymph System Also Becomes Swampy
There is another circulation system that runs alongside the VEIN system, which also relies on the Foot and Calf Pump.
This is called the “Lymphatic System“.
The lymph system is a group of organs, pipes and tissues that both keep a healthy balance of fluids in your body AND protect you from infection.
Lymph is a watery fluid that washes around all your cells and organs. This is an amazing system, but all we need to know right now is how it moves through our body, and what happens when the Foot and Calf Pump is under-used.
Every day you produce about 20 litres of PLASMA whic is a special component of blood. Plasma both delivers nutrients to your cells AND cleans up all the waste that is produced. Most of the plasma goes into the VEINS to a get a lift back to the heart.
But about 3 litres of the plasma is collected by the LYMPHATIC SYSTEM – and it is then called LYMPH. The lymph system has a network of small pipes becoming larger – just like the VEINS. These lymph pipes move up your body meeting at “Lymph DUCTS” and eventually empty into some large VEINS way up in your chest.
That was a little complex, but you now know exactly why pumping your Foot and Calf Pump regularly is so important.
And you cannot use your legs if your knees don’t let you…
In simple summary: Your body is designed for you to MOVE your feet, ankles and legs almost constantly so that the blood and fluids can get pumped (against gravity) to where they need to be.
And that’s why anything that reduces your movement of your ankles and legs (like chronic knee problems) is a very serious threat. Your entire quality of life depends on the movement of this part of your body.
Pumps Your Blood and Lymph Fluids from Your Lower Body
Huge Threat To Health Due To Poor Circulation + Increased Resistance
Using Your Foot-Calf Pump Is A Major Component Of Keeping Health and Vitality
Now we know that without the ability to work our “Foot-Calf” pump regularly we are going to have challenges with the drainage systems in the lower half of our bodies.
Just walking will do this to a great degree. Remember that “10,000 Steps Challenge”? Each step pumps a little blood and a little lymph fluid steadily up from the bottom of our bodies to the middle.
If your knees give you grief so you cannot walk without a lot of pain, swelling and misery – you have a problem. And after reading all that stuff above it is becoming a worrying problem.
But Our Bodies Are Extraordinary. And Our Knees Can Respond To The Right Training Program – Even When X-Rays Look Dismal!
This is not a miracle program where a wand is waved and things instantly get better. Rather we have a program based on the proven knowledge that increasing the strength of the muscles in and around a joint can have a huge positive effect on the health of that joint.
The key is to do the very opposite of what most of us want.
We want fast results, and we want to do as little as possible to get them, at least I do. And modern medicine has trained us to expect FAST, and that FAST equals GOOD.
With the recovery of your knee capability – FAST does not work! It fails. And if we tried to do if FAST and failed, then we believe we then have to “live with it”.
That leads us to use more medication to reduce the misery, or just do not do things we would like to do. Or NEED to do, like walking to keep our Foot and Calf Pump in action. We might have had surgery or might be thinking about having surgery, or on the “wait list”.
Making your knees muscles stronger is the answer for weak knee muscles. The great news is that making your knees stronger has benefits that may include:
That is pretty good news!
This program is for people who recognize that they need to help their knees get better.
Those knees might be just starting to give trouble, or they may have been a burden for decades. You might be in that terrible phase where your doctor has told to you to wait a few years until they are bad enough to have a knee replacement.
Or you might have already had knee surgery and it has not given you the relief you were looking for – or the surgery was so long ago that the improvement has faded. Or you might just be in the early phase where it only hurts a bit for a day or two after a walk – but it puts you off walking the Strand with your dog.
Whatever category your knees are in – there is really only one track that is not medicines or surgery or both. And if you do end up getting surgery later, the stronger and healthier your knee muscles are the better your results from surgery.
This Method must be done with a trained physiotherapist rather than be done at home. DIY at home just does not work in this case.
It is a custom training program involving your knee muscles as well as your ankles and hips, that starts at exactly the right level of intensity for your condition with exercises done precisely under close supervision that increase only according to your condition progress in sessions twice a week for 12 weeks while ensuring that the training is never too intense which will cause pain and inflammation and take you backwards.
Progress is SLOW and PRECISE. It is designed for “normal” people who are not professional athletes – which is most of us!
Rebuilding the strength of your knees is not something that can be done quickly.
If you attempt to go to fast, you go backwards.
And you need to continue the closely supervised training sessions for 12 weeks because less than that is not long enough to get results that can be sustained.
There is usually a good improvement within 4 to 5 weeks, but it is essential to gently build a strong base and to complete the process.
The Cunningham Method simply trains the muscles around and in your knee to become stronger. This has been shown in research to reduce pain and inflammation, as well as reduce need for medications. You will find your stability improves as your strength improves, and your ability to balance and go further and further is enhanced.
When you finish the program, you will need to continue with a simple program to ensure you keep your strength – especially if you are getting on in age. You cannot become slack with your knees, because you need them functioning so that you can keep the circulation in the bottom half of your body flowing!
Your muscles and knee joint can be strengthened with the PRECISE exercises, at the PRECISE level of intensity, the PRECISE level of frequency (how often), and WITHOUT OVERLOADING that will cause you inflammation and pain (and going backwards).
The process also includes the same PRECISE level of training of the muscles and joints of your hips and ankles. Without training your hips and ankles at the same time as your knee you will not get the results that can give you back your independence of movement.
The key to success is to have professional guidance at EVERY SESSION. This ensures you are doing the exercises PERFECTLY, with the CORRECT resistance, for the RIGHT number of repetitions, with the SUITABLE amount of rest while ensuring that you do not go backwards. This happens for your knees and surrounding muscles, plus you ankles and hips and surrounding muscles.
Progress is really slow, but steady. And it will take 2 sessions a week for 12 weeks for most people.
Program Results Are Consistent And Measurable
At Week 1 and Week 12 a full assessment is scored. It measures Symptoms and Stiffness, Pain Levels, Function in Daily Living, Function in Sports & Recreational Activities, Quality of Life and an Overall Score.
Here are one graduate’s (Susan) results:
“In your dreams Buddy!” But now…
If you have a “gammy knee” that is affecting your ability to live life as you want, or is heading in that direction, there is good news.
The news is not as good as hearing that a new pill or a particular surgery or a special doodad will fix you by tomorrow and it will last for years. But it is still good news.
Knowing that you can go in the right direction if you go very slowly and carefully for long enough to get results – is great news. 12 weeks is the time you need to allow for getting to the strongest position. However, if you are in decent condition you may be able to complete just a 6 week module. The more advanced your age and the weaker your knees, the more slowly and the longer the program you need.
There is generally a very clear improvement by about the 6 week point, with further gains in the next 6 weeks.
An Assessment is the next step. Contact Reception on 07 4728 2116 for this appointment. There is a good probability that this program will suit you, unless you have extreme versions of the following symptoms:
Your Health Insurance will cover some of the Program Fees – depending on your fund. The Program starts with 3 visits in the first week, then twice per week after that. Sessions are one on one, just you and the physio – this is needed to ensure the precision that training requires.
You now know how important your knees are for maintaining good circulation of half your body. If you do not work your Foot Calf Pump with walking and moving – your circulatory system is going to be increasing challenged. And it is difficult to do that if you knees won’t let you.
In closing, I just want to point out that professional athletes allow 6 weeks as a minimum to recover from knee injuries – and that is with daily physio sessions and starting with a very health body. Does it make sense that people not in their athletic prime will take at least that long?
And remember, once your knees and legs are working better, you still have to move! And you will still need to do some work to keep your knees strong – either at home or with us if that is better for you. We believe it is worth the time, cost and effort to get real results and improvements.
Thanks for reading.
Brett Cunningham.
Some more information: KNEE PROGRAM
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