Hey, it’s Dr. Watt from Pinecrest Chiropractic. Let’s talk about two of the best modalities that we use to treat knee pain.
Shockwave Therapy
The first one—my favorite modality for this—is shockwave therapy. Shockwave uses sound and pressure to break down those tissues.
In a few moments, I’ll show you how this works. I’m going to explain it first, though, because it’s kind of loud. It uses an air compressor over here, and that air compressor creates pressure within this piston to shove and force pressure into our tissues.
That pressure is going to break down tension in muscles and tendons and stimulate healing. It’s actually going to create some angiogenesis, which means new blood vessels to heal those areas.
Usually, we’ll put some ultrasound gel down on the patient, and then it’s just going to make this “pop, pop, pop, pop, pop” sound.
We can work through a ton of different tissues. For example, we can work through the quad. We can work down into the quadriceps tendon or even the patellar tendon. We can work into the adductors on the inside or work through the IT band and some of the tension on the outside as well.
Even in some knee cases, we can work lower than the knee into the calf and gastroc or tibialis anterior. All of these different muscles and subsequent tendons can have tons of different issues in them. When we start to break them down, they’ll start to heal back up appropriately.
We can change the settings within this to address what is specifically going on with you.
Laser Therapy
The other modality that we use a lot requires us to wear sunglasses. This is a fan-favorite part of the treatment modality. We’ll use these green glasses to use our laser.
Laser uses infrared light to penetrate down into the tissues. Depending on the frequency and setting, it’ll go two to three inches deep into the tissue, and those different settings will stimulate healing in different tissues.
It’ll increase mitochondrial production. The mitochondria are the powerhouse of the cell, so this creates more energy in those areas, as well as increased oxygenation and circulation.
Our body already naturally heals itself by bringing more oxygen and blood flow and using energy to do that. The laser takes that process that our body naturally already has and supercharges it, so it works so much faster. It works really well in areas that don’t naturally heal well on their own, like ligaments, which have notoriously terrible blood supply.
As we use the laser, it will feel nice and warm from the inside out, almost like you’re eating a bowl of chicken noodle soup.
You’ll see red lights that come out of it. That’s a guide light, and we’ll work through the different areas of complaint for each specific patient. Sometimes that’s below the knee and sometimes above. It depends on where your injury is once we find it.
Using These Modalities With Other Treatments
Both of these modalities are really quick, with shockwave taking five to 10 minutes and laser protocols taking about the same amount of time, depending on what your injury is.
They both work so well in conjunction with our other treatments, whether we’re using our Knee-on-Trac, the knee decompression we’ve talked about in other videos, manual adjustments, or other soft-tissue treatments.
It’s all part of a plan to get you feeling the way you should again. If you’ve got any more questions, I’d love to chat about it. Come on in.
