The 10 Worst Mistakes Made When Treating Chondromalacia Patella Knee Pain

Chondromalacia Patella is often treated incorrectly by healthcare professionals, it’s possible to get your knee back to being healthy and mobile and ready for any activities that you love to do. In this video, I’ll tell you the 10 worst mistakes made by people trying to fix their condemnation patella problem.

My hope is that you can use this information to be able to tell if what you’re doing right now is helpful for you or potentially harming you. And at the end of this video, I’ll tell you where to find my list of 13 things you should be doing to help your knee pain from Chondromalacia Patella.

Mistake number one is ignoring pain.

If you’re pushing through pain, you’re just continuing to walk even though your knee hurts, or you’re exercising, you just push through it and eventually it kind of feels better. That is a huge mistake because you’re aggravating the cartilage behind your kneecap worse and worse every time you push through the pain.

The cartilage is already irritated right here behind the kneecap. And every time you go to use your knee, you’re just rubbing it more and more. Just like if you had a cut on your skin right here and you rubbed it well, it’s trying to heal and you’re stopping it from healing so you should not be pushing through any sort of pain or discomfort.

If you’ve got compromised patella you need to listen to the pain and only do what you can without aggravating it more than No pain. No gain mentality does not work for this. You need to listen to the pain and stop doing the activity if it hurts you to do it.

Mistake number two is resting too much.

Resting is a good thing to do at the beginning of a Chondromalacia Patella problem or if you just had a flare up, it’s very painful and you’re trying to get it to flare down, then resting is an excellent choice. But if it’s flare down, then you should not be resting anymore and you need to be doing the right exercises to address the Chondromalacia Patella problem.

If you continue doing nothing, you continue avoiding those exercises or those activities that have made your Chondromalacia Patella and your knee worse over time, then what will happen is the root muscle imbalance that’s causing Chondromalacia Patella syndrome is likely going to fester, it’s not going to be treated, because you’re resting.

And when you do get back to being active again and you put your knee in a situation where you’re going to use it more, it’s going to begin to hurt again. So rest appropriately. Once you feel in better than you need to figure out what exercises you need to do to get to the root of the problem.

Mistake number three is quad strengthening, quadricep muscle strengthening.

The muscles that are on the front of the thigh right here that connects to the kneecap or the quadricep muscles. Those are often part of the root of the problem. It’s a muscle imbalance in those quad muscles where they’re too strong. And because of their attachments to the kneecap right here, they pull that kneecap up against the thigh bone, much to heart and that’s what irritates the cartilage behind the kneecap.

So if you go do exercises that are focused on tightening and squeezing these muscles, and making them tired and fatigued and eventually stronger over time, it’s only going to worsen the compression that you’re getting from the kneecap against the thigh bone back here. And this is something that even healthcare professionals don’t know. And they may be unknowingly telling you to go strengthen your quads, in fact, so make a big deal out of something called the VMO.

The inner part of the thigh muscle, the quad muscle right here on the top of the kneecap, but off to the left in this case is the right knee, that muscle the vastus medialis oblique is the part of the muscle we’re talking about. That’s what VMO stands for is thought to pull your kneecap over into the right position.

But really the imbalance that we’re finding here is that the quad muscles are just too strong. And we need to get them all as a whole to try to quiet down. And we can do this by strengthening other muscles that actually inhibit or quiet down the quad muscles. Which leads me to the next

Mistake number four is unfocused, glute strengthening,

that’s becoming more and more prominent, more well known that strengthening the glute muscles up here at the hip is truly what helps it aligned the kneecap on the thigh bone to reduce the pressures behind the kneecap and help your Chondromalacia Patella problem. The issue that people run into though is they’ll go do a glute exercise their intent is to strengthen their glutes by tiring them out.

But they’re having trouble actually feeling the muscles burning in the glutes. And I’ll give you an example here because maybe this is you. If you just think about the position that you’re in whether you’re standing or sitting whatever position you’re in, line down. Think about tightening up your glute muscles clench your glute muscles. If you also feel your thigh muscles tightening up when you tension your glute muscles.

Then you’re at high risk to inadvertently without meaning to tighten up your quad muscles when you’re trying to do a good exercise that’s going to strengthen the quad muscles which is going to feed into the imbalance of compressing that kneecap against the thigh bone with the quad muscles.

So you’ve got to figure out a way to really focus in your glutes without firing all the quad muscles and other thigh muscles, the hamstrings and everything else, so that you can strengthen the glutes truly strengthen the glutes and not feed into the same root problem that’s causing too much compression here.

Mistake number five is neglecting foot muscle strength.

In the foot here, you’ve got muscles that help to support the arch, especially the muscles that curl your toes. If you get stronger toe-curling muscles, then your arch will be better supported. And if that arch is better supported, it’s going to lift the arch and shove the shin bone over, which shoves the thigh bone over and gets better alignment of your kneecap against your thigh bone.

The foot muscles are rarely looked at when considering treatment for condemnation, patella, but they’re hugely important. They work in combination with the glute muscles to get the alignment correct for the kneecap on the thigh bone.

Mistake number six is focusing on weight loss.

Too much weight loss is often recommended as a treatment for contribution patella all over the internet. And if you see a doctor, they might even recommend that you lose weight so that you can reduce the pressure on your kneecap. But weight loss is not always easy for everyone. And it can take quite a bit of time. And if you focus instead, on strengthening the right muscles, like the glutes and the foot muscles, you may actually get some relief of your knee pain right away.

If you don’t have more than about 50 to 70 pounds or 20 to 30 kilos to lose, then it may be a better idea for you to prioritize strengthening the glute muscles in the foot muscles in order to get the knee pain down. Because if you can get the knee pain down, then you’re in a better position to go exercise and lose that extra weight that you mean to lose.

But if you’re beyond that range, if you’re more than about 50 to 70 pounds, or 20 to 30 kilos overweight, then it may become more of a priority for you to lose weight first, and then focus on strengthening the right muscles, there isn’t really a hard number that I can give you that okay, if you’re one pound over one kilo over this number, then focus on this than that.

Ideally, you should be focusing on both at the same time. I just want to give you hope that if you’ve been trying to lose weight and then had been struggling for months, or maybe even years, and it’s stopping you from being able to fix your knee problem, maybe you should fix your knee problem first and that’ll help you lose the weight because you’ll be more active. If your knee isn’t hurting, you. This will help you to prioritize your time and have a better strategy at your overall health.

Mistake number seven is relying on pain medications.

Doctors may recommend you take over the counter pain medication, or they may even prescribe you strong pain medications so that you can deal with the pain coming from your knee and potentially swelling to this is great if you’re having trouble sleeping at night. Or if you just need to be able to get through a certain part of life a certain part of the day or the week.

Taking pain medications can help you do that. But relying on pain medications as a way to get rid of the pain so that you can do what you need to do on a consistent basis like day in and day out weeks and months on end is a terrible idea because you’re not treating the root problem. You’re just masking the pain using medication. And we know that medication has terrible side effects, it really destroys our organs.

Ibuprofen is well known to generate stomach ulcers if you use it on a consistent basis. For weeks and months on end, it’s okay to use it as long as your doctor says, from time to time in situations, but taking it around the clock for weeks is a terrible idea. Be sure to plan a strategy where you’re not relying on pain medications and only using them if necessary.

Mistake number eight related to that is getting too many injections.

Here in the US, you’re only allowed three injections per year cortisone injections, you can’t get too many steroid injections because steroids are known to break down connective tissue, which is what cartilage is made out of the trade off with getting an injection is that you’re hoping to get longer lasting relief and a decrease in inflammation.

But it’s technically breaking down your cartilage over time. So if you get one injection, then you need to get going on fixing the root problem by strengthening the right muscles so that you’re taking the pressure off the kneecap. And that way you don’t have to rely on getting another injection in a few months.

But if you’re your second or third injection, or maybe it’s been years and you’ve been getting injections over the years, you’re not doing something right. You’re not being consistent somehow and you’re setting yourself up for some worse problems later on.

 

If you’re just relying on injections to get by, it’s important that you do the right exercises to treat the root of the problem of Chondromalacia Patella.

Mistake number nine is getting knee surgery right away.

It takes cartilage six to 12 months to fully heal and that’s assuming you’re doing Write things for it because it is possible for you to be doing the wrong treatments and not allowing your cartilage to heal completely. And truthfully, not all surgeons follow this exact timeframe. Some surgeons may push you through the non-surgical treatments a little too quickly, and then offer surgery before it’s been six months.

It just depends on your situation. You’ve got to figure out if it’s right for you to do surgery that soon. I always question if a patient’s really thinking about getting surgery because they’ll come in here to the clinic as a second or third opinion before they’re going to go sign up for surgery or sometimes even signed up for surgery already. And they’re checking before they go through with it. I always question with them.

Did you truly get your glute muscles stronger? Did you feel the glute muscles burning? When you did glute exercises if you even did it glute exercises, did you get your foot muscles stronger. If you’re trying to rehabilitate your knee pain, your condomless patella problem and you just worked on quads, then you did not do rehabilitation correctly, you need to go back and get those glutes stronger and get the feet stronger. And that is going to set you up for success.

Now, if you’ve truly gotten your glutes stronger, and your feet stronger, and you’ve given it a good six months plus to determine if you’re seeing improvements along the way. If you did not have improvements, then I would raise my hands up and say you know what, go talk to the surgeon, maybe it’s a good idea to have that lateral release surgery or the Chondra plasti the microfracture procedure all those surgeries that they do for Chondromalacia Patella syndrome for knee pain.

But in most cases, nearly all cases, it is possible to avoid surgery if you’re doing the right kind of rehabilitation leading up to it. And most importantly, if you do end up having surgery, and you didn’t work out the right muscles, you focus on your quads, possibly where you just jumped the gun a little too soon, maybe you follow the doctor right into surgery, you haven’t fixed that underlying root problem.

And if you never address it, and you’re relying on the surgery to get rid of your knee pain, then you’re going to carry over the glute weakness and the foot weakness and the quad muscle dominance into your life after the surgery. And chances are you’re weaker now, because you just went through an operation.

It’s just a matter of time before those strong quads are causing too much pressure on your kneecap and your glutes and feet can’t really help because they’re not strong enough. So surgery really is not a long term solution. It’s just a more permanent change in your body that may or may not help you talk to any surgeon; they’ll say this may not work.

It is possible that we do this surgery and you have a bad outcome. And I think it’s really because the root problem isn’t being addressed by the surgery, they’re not making you stronger in your foot muscles or your glute muscles. They’re merely changing the joint surfaces a bit, which you can still add pressure to them afterwards and make it worse

Mistake number 10 is not getting specialized help.

Now related to surgery. A lot of people that say the surgeon is a specialist and they are because they’re the only ones that know how to do surgery and are certified to do it. But helping somebody avoid surgery is its own specialty. That’s like what I do. And the specialty that I have is just not that common.

See most people with Chondromalacia Patella, get exercises off the internet, maybe from friends are recommendations from doctors, they may give them exercises, or maybe their doctor will refer them to a physical therapist who’s a specialist and seen people after surgery. I mean, if you’ve gone to the therapist, just look around.

And if everybody there’s had surgery, or most of the people have, then that’s what they specialize in. Because that’s what they’re seeing all day, they’re seeing people that have just had a knee replacement or a Chondra plasti or meniscectomy all those problems that cause knee pain, and they’re really not helping them prevent surgery, they’re helping them get their mobility back after surgery getting back to being active after surgery.

And that’s a whole different process than finding the root problem and addressing it so that you don’t end up in the surgical position. So if you’re looking to get professional help, make sure you do your research to find a true specialist that can help you avoid this problem. So you’re not having to deal with it for months or years to come.

If your therapist is having to do a lot of quad exercises and you can fire your quads pretty good. And you’ve tried to fire your glute muscles and they’re not working too well. That’s probably not a good therapist for you to be getting help from for your contra Malaysia problem. But if you have a surgery, they’re probably good to go to a proper treatment for Chondromalacia Patella knee pain involves getting the right muscles addressed so that you can fix that imbalance.

I’ve got a video for you linked in the description below here titled 13 best treatments for knee pain from Kandra Malaysian patella. If you scroll down into the description or hit the see more words to expand the description, you’ll find the video in there along with a link so you can begin to get some relief from your Chondromalacia Patella problem doing the right things.

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