Patellofemoral Syndrome is a very common cause of knee pain. This condition is sometimes referred to as runner’s knee, patellofemoral pain syndrome or PFPS. This can be a stubborn condition that sidelines many people from running, exercise and sports. If you’re already dealing with patellofemoral syndrome, you understand how incredibly frustrating this form of knee pain can be … making any squatting, running, or stairs very difficult. I have seen this injury make even the best Toronto runners have to completely stop their training because the pain comes on so quickly in their run that they cannot go on. I have seen many people have to stop their leg exercise program, avoid stairs and even significantly reduce their walking around Toronto.
Without the right patellofemoral pain treatment to fix the problem, many end up becoming sedentary gaining weight and becoming depressed because of the limitations this stubborn knee pain is putting on their life.
As you’ll read in this article, patellofemoral syndrome can have many different causes which can contribute to patellofemoral pain. Many of these causes or factors can be easily missed by a busy health care professional that has to see multiple patients per hour. For this reason, this form of knee pain does often not resolve and can linger on being a chronic problem that stops you from doing running, exercise and sports.
I have had patients that have suffered for years…unable to run, exercise, play sports, or go for long walks. Many of these patients would love to run the Toronto waterfront path along Lake Ontario. This is very frustrating to me as a physiotherapist…it doesn’t have to be this way. This is because they have received treatment or advice that is only directed at the symptoms rather than the true underlying cause of the knee pain or they received treatment that did not fully address the problem causing the patellofemoral pain.
Unfortunately, patellofemoral syndrome does not typically go away by itself and it will usually get worse if you don’t get the right knee pain treatment or try to run or push through the pain. Usually most people start off with mild pain that comes on later into their running or exercise program. As they push through the pain every work out the pain starts to increase and come on sooner until they are eventually forced to stop. Many people even try to take several weeks off of rest and find out as soon as they return to running or exercise their pain returns. So if you are having knee pain and reading this article my hope is to give you the knowledge you need to make the right decision about patellofemoral pain treatment and get you back to the active Toronto lifestyle that you deserve.
Specifically, this article will aim to:
1) give you an understanding of why patellofemoral syndrome can be so difficult to fully resolve, and how the right treatment addresses those difficulties
2) Give you extremely important information on how to choose the right patellofemoral
treatment so that your knee pain doesn’t manifest for years
3) provide some advice and self-treatment techniques to start easing your knee pain and get you
back to activities that you are struggling with or unable to do.
Why Patellofemoral Treatment Often Fails To resolve Your knee Pain.
I believe a major reason that patellofemoral syndrome becomes a chronic long-term knee pain for many people is that most patellofemoral treatment approaches do not fully address all the causes of the problem. Most physicians, physiotherapists and health care professional are forced to rush from one patient to the next and simply don’t have the time to identify and treat all the potential causes of your pain
It is important to highlight that depending on who you see for help, many treatment approaches are aimed at symptoms rather than causes. For example, many physiotherapists will simply tell you to rest, give you a heat pad, modalities and ultrasound and a few simplistic generic exercises. Many physicians will prescribe anti-inflammatories and advise you to rest. With both of these types of treatments most runners will find that as soon as they return to running their knee pain quickly returns.
Another reason this injury is often unsuccessfully treated is that there is so many potential factors and causes that can result in patellofemoral pain, so you cannot have one treatment plan for all patellofemoral syndrome cases and expect treatment success.
Every case of patellofemoral syndrome needs a specific treatment approach for the underlying causes of their patella pain. I have many patients with patellofemoral syndrome that are runners however, I see a wide variety of Patella femoral pain syndrome and other types of knee pain have a wide variety of body types and activity levels. I work with runners from beginner level to ultramarathon, exercise enthusiasts, people looking to be physically active and even sedentary office workers.
When patella pain starts, it can have a devastating impact on your lifestyle. It can continue to decrease the distance a runner can run before pain is severe eventually leading to the runner having to give up running. The pain can increase to a point where people have difficulty walking the dog or walking to work. In some cases the pain can even be aggravating when sitting at a desk trying to do work. This is no way to go about your life when you can get rid of patellofemoral syndrome with proper effective treatment
“I have played soccer my whole life but recently decided to take up long distance running. Within a few weeks I was injured and required help. I waited a few more weeks thinking the pain would go away but it never did. I had sharp pain in my knee everytime my foot struck the ground. Even walking was painful.
I decided to call Shawn to discuss my symptoms. When I explained my symptoms, Shawn was able to give me the help I needed. He provided in-home therapy and gave me a series of exercises to do each week after our sessions. Thanks to Shawn’s treatment over the past few months, I just completed my first half marathon!
I highly recommend Shawn. He is friendly, knowledgeable in his field, and dedicated to helping his clients reach their goals.”
Ryan M. Toronto, ON
Request a Free Phone Consultation to take your first step towards fixing patellofemoral pain.
What Are The Causes Of Patellofemoral Syndrome?
As I mentioned above, the best way to completely cure this knee pain is to address all factors that could be causing your patellofemoral pain, which can be many things that could be contributing depending on each individual case.
Here are some examples of factors that can lead to patellofemoral syndrome:
– weak gluteal muscles
– Tight Iliotibial band
– tight muscles in the hip
– Stiff joints in the foot
– Big bulky running shoes
– weak feet
– weak quads
– tight quads
– weak hamstrings
– Tight hamstrings
– Tight hip flexors
– unstable ankle or history of ankle sprains
– Weak hip rotational muscles
– unstable patella
-Stiff patella
-Training error
-running biomechanics
-exercise biomechanics/technique
These are just a few important factors out of many that could be causing your patellofemoral pain.
Just because you have a common cause of patellofemoral pain syndrome doesn’t mean you’ll develop it or that it’s a major contributor to the pain you’re experiencing. It also means that not every case will have all of these common causes of patella pain. It could be one major cause or a combination of several of these factors which lead to your knee pain. I have had patients with strong and flexible quads and they still develop patella femoral pain syndrome. In those case’s it was often weak glutes, weak muscles in the hip or an extremely tight iliotibial band that caused the condition.
Many time patellofemoral syndrome can be caused by one problem that leads to another such as weak glutes leads to a tight tensor fascia late which leads to excessive tightness in the iliotibial band which leads to excessive pulling on the patella. Or the patella pain could have started because of an old injury which you completely forgot about. For example, an episode of back pain could lead to glutes weakness which will affect the alignment of your leg causing increased compression on the patella. Another example is maybe you had an ankle sprain which was not properly addressed and remains unstable which leads to the knee having to work harder to stabilize the leg. In that situation you could work on your quad strength, quad flexibility and roll your IT band all day long but if you don’t address the ankle problem you will not fix the knee pain.
Want to find out which of the things on the list above might be causing your knee pain?
If you are in the Toronto area, click here to request a FREE in-person consultation or FREE phone consultation with a physiotherapist who has expertise in patellofemoral syndrome.
Let’s look at some other causes on our list above …
Some people get confused when they read that weak glutes and weak hip muscles can have
anything to do with patellofemoral syndrome. Weak glute muscles lead to the inability to stabilized your pelvis which leads to poor lower leg alignment thus putting increased compression on the patella when you walk, run or squat.
So What Is The Best Patellofemoral syndrome Treatment in Toronto, Ontario?
Hopefully, after reading above one can see that every case of patellofemoral syndrome is different and requires an expert health care professional to identify all the various factors that could be causing the problem.
Missing even one factor that could be causing your patellofemoral syndrome can be enough to keep treatment from fully resolving your knee pain and the limitations it is placing on your life. Depending on which factors are causing your knee pain, different types of practitioners will be best suited to help you get rid of the pain and back to the active lifestyle you desire here in Toronto.
Shawn Williams Physiotherapy in Toronto believes that identifying the different factors causing your pain and creating a solid plan for getting rid of it should be available to you free. If you are in the Toronto area, click here to request a FREE in-person consultation with Shawn who has over a decade experience working with patellofemoral syndrome in runners of all levels and with people of all different activity levels.
I am a little biased, but I can honestly say that good physiotherapy (“hands on” manual therapy approach treatment) is highly effective and good manual physiotherapy advice should be able cure most cases of patellofemoral syndrome.
Sometimes relief can be achieved very quickly and other times it can take many physiotherapy treatment sessions, but most cases of patella knee pain are very fixable with the right treatment.
A physiotherapist who is also an expert in hands-on manual therapy is equipped with many potential highly effective treatment techniques and strategies that many physiotherapists are unable to provide.
Not all physiotherapy approaches are created equal. Here are some things you need to consider when seeking physiotherapy, or any other form of treatment.
1) They are trained in, and use, hands-on manual therapy techniques as part of their treatment plans. In Canada these physiotherapists the highest level of expertise in manual therapy will be identified with the credentials FCAMPT which stands for Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Manipulative Physiotherapy. These physiotherapists have completed years of post-graduate education and attained internationally-recognized qualifications in hands-on therapy.
2) They see very few patients per hour and provide plenty of one on one hands on assessment and treatment so they actually have the time to identify all the factors causing your knee pain and the time to treat every one of those factors.
3) They are progressing your exercises each week and closely monitoring if you are doing them properly.
If your healthcare profession is not using some form of hands-on manual therapy, you are likely not getting everything you need to completely get rid of your knee pain. If they are rushing from one patient to the next, seeing multiple patients per hour or multiple patients at one time,
it’s impossible to give the highest quality of care. In order to fully resolve patellofemoral syndrome, you need high quality care and undivided attention in your treatment sessions.
Shawn Williams Physiotherapy, treatment sessions are always one on one with a FCAMPT credentialed physiotherapist and all physiotherapy sessions are 60 minute treatment sessions in Toronto. This allows for time and focused attention on your knee pain so that we look at every possible cause of your patellofemoral syndrome and do not end up just treating the symptoms. This will allow you to get back to running, exercise, sports or those activities that you are missing out on as quickly as possible. Shawn teaches patients everything they need to be doing on their own time to get better. Physiotherapy therapeutic exercises are a very important part of any patellofemoral syndrome treatment plan. Which is why Shawn takes the time to review exercises and make sure that you are doing them with 100 percent accuracy so that you can complete these important exercises safely and effectively at home. Shawn also offers dry needling services which can occasionally be a key component of successful treatment of patellofemoral syndrome. It is the combination of all of the above mentioned treatments that will ensure the best chance that you can fix your patella femoral syndrome and return back to your previous active lifestyle.
Shawn also wants to make sure that all patients are 100% confident that we can help before they begin
treatment. For that reason, we offer FREE phone consultations and FREE onsite consultations in Toronto.
What Can I Do At Home For Patellofemoral Syndrome Relief?
The video below provides a very useful patellofemoral tape job which can help to relieve pain immediately. Shawn uses lots of patellofemoral taping and gets much better results than using a patellofemoral brace. Many patients will have come to their physiotherapy assessment with a patellofemoral brace finding that it does not offer very much help. These patients are very surprised when they use the tape to find out how much better it is than the patellofemoral brace.
***Please note that that patellofemoral taping is just one of many treatment techniques that I use for patellofemoral syndrome and although it is likely that you will get pain relief it highly unlikely that this technique will completely fix your knee pain. Diagnosis and treatment from a hands-on treatment qualified healthcare provider is usually necessary to fully fix patellofemoral syndrome.
In regards to what else can be done on your own, another question we often get from patients is should I get a patellofemoral brace? As mentioned above most people will find that the tape job above gives them more relief than a patellofemoral brace. Many patients that choose to get a patellofemoral brace find that the longer they use the brace the worse the pain is if they take the brace off. This is because without proper physiotherapy treatment the muscle imbalances will continue to get worse and the underlying causes remain unfixed. Eventually, if people rely on a brace they will find that the brace does not give them the pain relief it did in the beginning.
Don’t Let Patellofemoral Syndrome Keep You From Living An Active Toronto Lifestyle
Patellofemoral pain syndrome is not a condition you have to live with. It does not have to stop you from doing all those active things in life that make you happy. If patellofemoral syndrome or any form of knee pain is keeping you from being as active as you would like to be, let us help you get to the bottom of the issue and create a plan to get you back to the active lifestyle you deserve. If you are in the Toronto area, request a free phone consultation here or call/text us at 416-660-4187.
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