The Bee's Knees

I’ve honestly been so excited to talk about knees lately. I’ve had an on-going knee situation for many years now, and I just keep getting more interested in joints and finding the tiny places in the body that effect the big places in the body.

I’ll start with my story but I’ll make it simple. I began having knee pain. Then it stopped. Then it got worse, and then it has just continued to do that on repeat for the past 4 years. I didn’t have a specific injury but it was chronically being used incorrectly. When I say “incorrect,” I mean that I wasn’t using the joint in it’s intended way. The knee is a hinge joint, like how a door opens and closes, and it doesn’t have a lot of rotation in it, like how the shoulder joint moves in the socket. So basically, I’ve been walking on my knee doing some crazy side to side joint movement and it became really unhappy.

Essentially joints come down to muscular health—flexibility and strength. There are other things that impact joints as well but I’m going to start with muscles because that is the basics, and then I will get into a couple of other things I’ve been playing with, but really, it’s an endless journey. Joints are stabilized by our muscles and the relationship between the front/back, side/side integrity of them. If a joint is too loose the muscles react by contracting to keep the joint stable, and this sometimes means too much contracting, hence we feel some kind of pain somewhere. If a muscle is too tight or over-developed, same thing. For instance, the quads and hamstrings are the front and back of the thigh. If the quads are too tight, it puts unbalanced stress on the knee, and specifically the patella (knee cap), and pulls down on your hip bones, sometimes causing lower back pain. Sometimes muscles are really, really tight because they are actually very weak. One of Muscles main jobs is to protect the joints so if it feeling insecure about it’s strength, it’s going to clamp down harder…clinging on for dear life.

Another aspect of our joints is that they have a lot of proprioceptors in them which give our central nervous system information about where we are in space. Proprioceptors are imbedded in our muscles as well, such as ones for pain and temperature. They are essentially the feeling part of us, sometimes referred to as the sixth sense. In the joints though, proprioceptors help with movement, placement, and load. They are constantly giving our brains information about our body. Again, this is the part of our bodies that tell the muscles to contract or loosen, depending on what’s going on.

The body is obviously very complex and layered but the previous two points (muscular balance and proprioceptors) are the two things I wanted to touch on before moving forward. Now on to practical action.

There are two places in the body that I most often recommend people to strengthen: rhomboids and mid traps (the muscles between your should blades) and the gluteus medius. I’m focusing on the tokhes (your butt) for the purposes of this writing. The glut medius helps stabilize the hips and in turn helps stabilize the back and the knees. I can’t emphasize enough how important this is to strengthen. Doing squats, monster walks, laying down and doing leg lifts, stair steps, using a band around your knees.. So many ways to work with the butt, so collect them all!

The other thing (and this is where I feel like I caught a real genius moment) is working to strengthen the pinky toe. Yep, the tiny outer toe which is oft neglected. By and large, most of us have been wearing shoes our entire lives which cut off our foots ability to balance us. Let’s be honest, walking on two legs has a lot of advantages, but we really are far more complex and prone to injury compared to our quadruped friends. All of our body weight rest on our tiny feet and then we limit their function even further but shoving them in shoes, sometimes tiny shoes, where they don’t get to be used as they are intended. Of course, there is a huge variation in how people walk and what muscles are being over used, under used, or used in some other way I can’t conceive of. I should say too, the body is extremely adaptable and bodies learn what is correct for their body. Someone with bone or structural difference will learn to walk in a way that suits their needs. This is not a conversation about ableism, but it is worth noting that the anatomy texts books are inaccurate.

For my purposes, though, I’m writing specially about how the average person uses their feet. Now the extra genius part. I began doing squats and putting some emphasis in my outer feet but I found it wasn’t quite enough. So I began doing squats while on the ball on my foot. This forced my toes to spread out and balance out. This forced the tiny neglected pinky toe to wake up. This has begun to balance out the muscles in my legs and take pressure off the inside of my knee joint which was over tight. In short, this began to heal my knee. This feel like a miracle. And also, you are a confirmed nerd when you get this excited about the muscles in your toes and have to share about it to the world. I accept my title..

But this is good for all the muscles in the feet and legs as well, no matter which area is stronger or weaker than others. I'm at the age of Sensible Shoes (though I've never been able to deal with crazy heels and what not...), so I recommend that too. Plus, I have found inserts in my shoes to be really helpful. I should say, too, that for me this is on-going and I keep having to find more ways to work with the damage in my knee. Bodies are a journey and can be really, really complicated.

The finally thought I have is around nutrition. I love salt. I love sugar. And finally I’ve recognized a legitimate reason (for me) to quit eating giant bags of salty chips on the regular. Salt is obviously drying and when we loose moisture in our body we are taking it from places like our joints. In some cases eating too much salt can cause swelling, but when we are dehydrated our tendons and ligaments become dehydrated and those are the connective tissues that attach to our bones. Joint pain is also called inflammation. It’s all connected. So, I am now going to quit my bag ‘o chip habit and see how things go.

And the finally, finally thought is my favorite part about our bodies/spirits. The ever widening, wielding, wild spiritual freedom we all have capacity of being. We are feeling machines. We are total sense organisms. We are literally made to feel the world with our bodies. As we tap into this incredible system we heal our bodies and spirits, we connect more deeply, and open up to even greater capacities of experience in life. Taking care of this sacred temple is one of the most subversive and powerful tools we have.

I’ll keep you posted on my adventures and please feel free to leave comments below. Thanks for reading.