Joint Pain Q & A

What is joint pain?

Joint pain often arises because of soft tissue damage, such as inflammation in a ruptured ligament in your knee or a strained tendon in your ankle. You could also dislocate a joint, which most commonly happens with the shoulders.

Repetitive strain and overuse injuries are frequent causes of joint pain. If your joint pain is instant and severe, it could be a fracture in one of the bones. Or it could be a tear in the cartilage, which is most common in the labrum lining your shoulder and hip joints or the meniscus inside your knee.

What conditions cause joint pain?

Some of the conditions that contribute to joint pain include:

• Bursitis
• Snapping hip syndrome
• Cruciate ligament injuries
• Dislocated kneecaps
• Iliotibial band syndrome
• Osgood-Schlatter disease
• Rotator cuff injuries
• Tendonitis
• Pinched nerves
• Torn cartilage
• Frozen shoulder

The most common problem causing chronic joint pain is arthritis. There are numerous forms, but the wear-and-tear-related osteoarthritis is the most well known. Injuries and repetitive strain are also common causes of joint pain, especially in people who are very physically active or have to repeat the same movements over long periods.

What treatments are there for joint pain?

Treatment for joint pain traditionally focuses on medications and physical therapy and moves on through joint injections and then to surgery. Many people have total joint replacement surgeries because of joint pain that doesn’t respond to less-invasive treatments.

At Ascent Chiropractic, the team can help with joint pain using a more natural, holistic approach. They look at all aspects of your life to see what might be contributing to your joint pain. For instance, is your diet making joint pain worse? Are there other aspects of your lifestyle you could change to improve the health of your joints?

Your provider is also an expert in using chiropractic adjustments to realign structures throughout your body in order to relieve pain. It’s quite possible for a problem in one part of your body to be causing pain in another area, because any type of misalignment increases strain somewhere else.

You can also benefit from relaxing and restorative massage therapy as part of your treatment program at Ascent Chiropractic. Call today to find out more.