How does knee pain occur?

Well, knee pain is very, very common, especially with women. And we have these curvy hips, and it puts more strain

on that knee than typically the male structures.

Anybody can get knee pain. And you get knee pain usually if it's not a direct impact like a skiing injury or a fall or blow

where you blow out your anterior cruciate ligament or fracture. You can actually get a lot of the problems from malalignment.

And what that means is certain muscles are not working properly. There are certain muscles that will tend to get tight,

and they create a dysfunction on the knee, and there are certain muscles they get weak and also create a dysfunction on the knee. And what we want to do is assess what is actually

driving that knee pain. And there's very common factors that we find. I would say the major muscles that affect the knee are the gluteus medius, which is very, very

important for any stability in the lower extremity coming from the trunk downward-- is that gluteus medius,

because its role is very important, especially for women, to keep that thigh from internally rotating, which

puts a lot of pressure on the inside knee. It not only puts pressure on the inside knee between the two big bones, but it also changes the alignment of how

the kneecap sits in this-- what they call the trochlear groove of the thigh bone. So the alignment of the kneecap and the alignment

between the lower leg and the upper leg-- that gluteus medius is key. The other is the iliotibial band.

It's that long-- it's a very small muscle up at the hip that is this very long tendon that tends to dominate

the position of the thigh. And if that is really tight, it actually makes the gluteus medius even weaker because it

will internally rotate the thigh even more so, putting that other muscle at a disadvantage. The other muscles that we look at are in the foot and ankle.

Typically, the anterior tibialis muscle, which comes down the front of the shin-- that's very important for stabilizing the foot