Chondromalacia Patella – Everything You Need To Know Diagnosis & Treatment

Chondromalacia Patella causes knee pain right behind the kneecap on the front side of the knee. If treated correctly, it always improves very well and allows people to get back to being healthy and active again. When the space behind the kneecap gets very inflamed. It can be extremely debilitating and interfere with daily activities like doing chores, walking, kneeling and squatting down to pick things up from the floor.

When it gets that bad. That’s when people typically decide to go to the doctor and get an x ray, where then the doctor looks at the X ray, looking at this space, and then they’ll tell you that you have Chondromalacia Patella. In this video, I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about Chondromalacia Patella, including how to self-diagnose it in case you haven’t had an x ray yet, and also what to do to begin to treat the problem so that you can fix it for good.

I’ll also be talking about the difference between Kandra Malaysia, patella, and patella femoral pain syndrome. Be sure to watch to the end so that you don’t miss a thing and how to fix your knee pain. So let’s start with the basics. What does Chondromalacia Patella mean? Well, patella refers to the kneecap bone, this little bone right here on the front of the knee. It’s called the kneecap.

But in the medical field, we call it the patella Chondromalacia are two terms put together their Latin Of course. Chondro means cartilage. And Malacia means softening. So when it’s all put together, they’re talking about cartilage softening on the backside of the kneecap. Now, this is a misnomer, or it’s not named appropriately because we don’t really know if the cartilage actually gets softer, or exactly what’s happening to the tissue leading to the pain that you’re experiencing.

But the reason why they called it this Chondromalacia Patella is because when they take an x ray of somebody that has this type of knee pain, that pain in the front of the knee, but behind the kneecap, they’ll take an extra with the knee in this position bent so that they can look under the kneecap. And over the thigh bone right here, that space that’s right in there.

What they find when they compare it to the other side, the pain, the side that does not have pain is that the space is decreased. And so then they’re making the assumption in the medical field, that you have a problem with a cartilage behind your kneecap. And we know that it could also be the cartilage on the end of the thigh bone causing pain in the exact same area.

And really, if you’re trying to split hairs and figure out if the problem is more from the cartilage behind the kneecap or more from the cartilage on the end of the thigh bone, it’s not going to make a huge difference. There’s irritation coming from the same root problem, which I’ll talk more about the root problem as we keep going along.

Now let’s talk about the difference between Chondromalacia Patella and patella femoral pain syndrome. You’ve got to think of these two conditions as being on a spectrum. So you have patellofemoral pain syndrome on one end of the spectrum. And then you have condemnation patella, and I would go to say that on the other end of the spectrum opposite of patellofemoral pain syndrome is knee osteoarthritis.

So Chondromalacia Patella is kind of in the middle of those two people with patellofemoral pain syndrome tend to not be as severely inflamed or debilitated or in pain compared to people that have Chondromalacia Patella , but it’s my belief that people that have patellofemoral pain syndrome are on the path to developing Chondromalacia Patella  and in fact, many of the people that had been given the diagnosis of patellofemoral pain syndrome might very well have Chondromalacia Patella.

The main difference between the two is yeah, it’s more severe, it tends to affect people a little bit older, but also it’s the X ray. Chances are if you’ve been to the doctor and you’ve had knee pain on the front of your knee, and you’ve had this X ray where they’re looking this way at your knee joint to see the space between the kneecap and the thigh bone, and they see that narrowing then they’re going to give you the diagnosis of Chondromalacia Patella, but if for some reason you don’t get an x ray, because some doctors try to stay away from it.

They already know what’s going on then they may not tell you how kanji emulation with tele and they may give you the diagnosis of patellofemoral pain syndrome instead. But what we have to assume is that if that space is decreased, that’s visible in the X ray between the kneecap and the thigh bone, then there is some sort of injury occurring to your cartilage, whether it’s permanent or not remains to be seen.

But there is some compression some extra pressure going through that joint causing the space to decrease in the cartilage to be compressed. And so I would classify that as Chondromalacia Patella and really we should it needs a different name Chondromalacia in my opinion is not the best way to term it but the name is stuck. Everybody uses it. There’s you know, it’s in the insurances and the whole healthcare field the United States, it’s not going to go away.

Now, how do you diagnose conundrum Alicia patella let’s talk about that. Well, obviously If you have pain in the front of the knee, and it feels like it’s kind of behind the kneecap, that’s a huge sign that you have Chondromalacia Patella, and of course, if you’ve gone to the doctor and had the X ray, and that’s even more so telling you that you have Chondromalacia Patella.

But if you haven’t been to the doctor, if you haven’t had an x ray yet, let me tell you what you can look for yourself so that you can begin to decipher if you have more patellofemoral pain syndrome or Chondromalacia Patella, at the very start with knee pain when it first is beginning in somebody, they usually tend to be in their teenage years, or even in their 20s.

Sometimes it starts in the 30s. But very often people to get this type of problem. It happens in high school playing high school sports. It also happens in runners as they begin to take on more and more running over time.

Typically, the pain will come on immediately after a session of doing exercise for a sport or if you go to the gym or run, play basketball, soccer, those kinds of things, after you stop exercising is when the pain tends to come on right there behind the kneecap, it may linger for an hour or two may not be that long. As it gets worse, it’ll last longer and longer. It’ll go into the night and being awake people up at night.

And in even worse situations, people wake up with pain in the morning. Still, if the root problem is not addressed properly, that and you keep exercising in a way that’s aggravating the knees and over compressing that kneecap against the thigh bone, then the problem will continue to worsen over time to where it begins to hurt during activity. It lingers after activity for awhile, and it’s more intense and it’ll hurt the next day.

And people typically have the experience where they say, You know what, I’m going to go do this run by No, I’m going to pay for it for the next few days. They know they’re going to be hurting for the next 2, 3, 4 days or more afterwards, because that’s how they’ve seen their knee respond to the activity that they’re doing.

If you keep up this activity in a state that is injuring your knee, then it begins to hurt all the time. You have no chances of resting it enough to make it not hurt. I mean you have to rest completely for like weeks in order for it to not hurt. But if you try to give it the normal few days to recover, it still hurts. Then at the worst part of congratulation patella now it’s now we’re talking compromised patella.

And in the beginning it was more patellofemoral pain syndrome, it turns into Chondromalacia Patella when you have symptoms that are lingering more than a few days at a time. That’s my personal opinion, I can’t tell you that that’s in a textbook, or you know that your doctor agrees with what I’m saying here.

If you’re seeing a doctor for this problem, that’s just kind of how I delineate it. And I think they overlap. They’re treated the same way anyway, so it’s not really a huge distinction to make between patellofemoral pain syndrome and condemnation, patella, all you need to know as somebody who’s got this kind of a problem is that it’s going to be more severe at this point. At its worst, it is hurting even when you’re just sitting when you’re sitting down, and your knees just bent like this at about 90 degrees or so.

The cartilage is so irritated behind the kneecap and on the end of the thigh bone that the normal resting pressure of the of the muscles in your leg are now too much to take for the cartilage is back there it is so irritated that just a little bit of pressure begins to cause knee pain. So people get what’s called the moviegoer sign.

You can Google this, it’s when you get knee pain just sitting around they call it movie goers sign because people are at the theater at the cinema watching the movie, and their knee starts to hurt in the middle of the movie. And they’re just sitting there. It’s because their knee has been aggravated for months, probably at least weeks. And that cartilage is beginning to get very irritated and just sitting now is irritating it.

That to me is kind of the apex of contemplation patella, when it’s that severe and you know that if you go exercise a certain way it’s going to aggravate it. Now if you’re in your younger years, like 20s and 30s, it’s not going to progress into knee osteoarthritis yet, but if you don’t treat this properly, once you hit your late 40s 50s And definitely 60s, then this type of problem tends to turn into knee osteoarthritis.

And at that point, you’re facing a loss of cartilage completely and potential bone on bone situations massive stiffness in the joints and situations that lead to things like joint replacement surgery. Now let’s back up a minute and just talk about condemnation, patella treatments that your doctor might offer you if you go to the doctor for this problem. So say you walk into the doctor’s office, they give you the X ray they find that space on the X rays decrease between your kneecap and your thigh bone.

The very first thing they’re probably going to tell you to do is go rest stop that exercise that you’re doing whatever it is take 234 weeks off maybe even longer and then come back and see them and they may suggest you take over the counter pain medications like Tylenol or I profaned, they usually recommend an NSAID like ibuprofen or naproxen.

And they do that because of the anti-inflammatory effects of those medications are trying to get the inflammation in the cartilage to go down as well as treat the pain. When you go back to the doctor a few weeks later a month later, if you’re still having the problem, or it’s getting worse than they might recommend prescription strength pain medications that are going to be stronger than your over-the-counter pain medications.

And if it’s still not getting better after you try that, and they’re probably going to tell you to get an injection in your knees, they’re going to inject cortisone steroid medication in order to get the inflammation down right inside the knee. And if you still don’t respond to that, then they’re going to be sending you out to an orthopedic surgeon for a surgical consult. And there’s a couple surgeries that are done for this.

Occasionally, it’s actually quite rare to get a patella femoral pain surgery or Chondromalacia surgery. But the surgeries that they’ll do, they’ll look at shaving off any cartilage that looks like it’s frayed back there on the back of the kneecap or on the end of the thigh bone.

So they’re trying to smooth out the surfaces. In other words, and then the other surgery that’s more commonly done these days is where they’ll try to relocate the kneecap, they’ll do a realignment of the patella in an effort to get it to sit in the groove of the thigh bone better.

And the thinking behind that is that for some reason your muscles or your genetics are pulling the kneecap over to the side one way and it’s starting to rub the joint the bone here inappropriately and I’m going to speak to that there’s a root cause for that that’s fixable without surgery. But that’s what surgeons are trying to do.

They’re thinking in terms of like how can I cut the tissues around here and allow this person to heal in a way that makes the kneecap aligned better. Now oftentimes before it goes to surgery, while people are still getting medications, but usually before they get injection, doctors will refer patients with Chondromalacia Patella out to physical therapists and physical therapists.

They all generally have extremely good intentions, but most are specialized in helping people after they’ve had surgery. And if you’ve not had a surgery for your congratulation patella problem, they may not know how to handle you very well, what I often see done in physical therapy clinics that makes Chondromalacia Patella patients worse is the work on the thigh muscles, the quad muscles on the front of the thigh here, sometimes we’ll even emphasize a certain part of the muscle called the VMO vastus medialis oblique, that’s basically the inner part of your quad muscles. S

o if you’re looking at a quad right here, here’s the front of the thigh. They’re looking at this teardrop shaped part of the muscle. And the theory with that is that if you strengthen that part of the muscle, it pulls the kneecap over into the groove better. But in my opinion, this is false thinking, and it tends to make the problem worse, it’s completely impossible to isolate out that one part of the muscle.

And there’s exercises that people do out there where they are low support their neon on a chair on a table or bed or something, and they’ll extend their knee but with the foot turned out to try to bias this muscle working. But foundationally the exercise is wrong. And here’s why. Let me tell you the root problem of condemnation, patella, this is extremely important for you to understand that you from what I’ve explained so far, you should understand that the kneecap is being overly compressed on the thigh bone.

Now, what compresses the kneecap against the thigh bone? That’s a question that nobody’s asking the surgeons that asking your general doctors not asking. And even the physical therapists aren’t asking this question. Now the quad muscles that are right here, they attach directly into that that bone right here the kneecap. And then there’s a ligament that connects from the bottom of the kneecap here to this bumpy part of the shin bone.

When those quad muscles contract and work, they pull the kneecap against the thigh bone. Now this should normally happen. But if you have a muscle imbalance, meaning your quad muscles are too strong relative to other muscles in your hip and thigh, then it is extremely possible that you’re going to over compress the kneecap against the thigh bone.

And if that happens for a too long a period, and if it’s if you’re an exercise you like to go run and do activities, jumping activities, and you tend to use your quads a lot. It’s going to irritate that cartilage back there and on the end of the thigh bone. Now that’s one aspect of having this muscle imbalance.

The second aspect of having this quad muscle imbalance is that you tend to have weak glutes when the quads are dominance. When your glutes are weak, it changes the position of the thigh bone. And because the thigh bone down here at the knee joint, it has a groove Move. If your knee is not controlled well from the hip by the glute muscles, then the tracking of the kneecap on the thigh bone is going to be off.

And this is why the surgery to pull somebody’s kneecap over I think is rarely needs to be done. I’m sure there’s a few people out there that truly need that surgery. And it’s neat that they develop that surgery. But it’s my strong belief that many people are having that surgery unnecessarily. And they haven’t properly learned how to control and strengthen their hip muscles to better control the thigh bone down here at the knee joint so that they can naturally align the knee joints and not have this conundrum Malaysia patella problem.

This muscle imbalance is often resolved by getting stronger glutes and learning how to use them in your normal everyday motions, especially exercising you know, whatever activity you like to do that led to you possibly having this problem, you need to learn how to use your glutes and other muscles properly so that your alignment is right and the pressures are appropriate in the knee joint so that you can heal.

Now if you’re dealing with Chondromalacia Patella right now and it’s flared up, you’re having pain, even just sitting around getting the movie goers sign, you need to start doing glute exercises immediately. And you should begin to find that your kneecap pain gradually reduces over time and you want to do it in such a way that does not make your quads work. And some people get all up in arms about well what about the quads, you need to exercise all the muscles exhaustively in the area in order to fix a problem.

I completely disagree. If your quad muscles are overly dominant, then they almost need to get weaker relative to your glutes so that you can deep pressurize your knee joint. So I would focus completely on doing glute exercises until your knee problem resolves. And the description below I’ve got two videos linked for glute exercises that are designed to help with knee pain.

So if you’re looking for the next steps on what to do at home, go check out those videos down there. I’ve also got a playlist of a bunch of other videos we’ve done regarding kneecap problems. And then I need to let you know as well about our 28th Day Knee Health And Wellness Boosts Program.

It’s a comprehensive program structured and organized. It’s designed at treating the root problem causing that over compression in the knee joint that muscle imbalance that I’ve just told you about.

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