♪ Bob and Brad, ♪
♪ The two most-famous physical therapists on the internet. ♪
- Hi, I'm Bob Schrupp, physical therapist.
- Brad Heineck, physical therapist.
- And together we are the most famous physical therapists
on the internet.
- Well, in our opinion, of course, Bob.
- Brad, you wanna talk today about knock knees.
- Right.
- The causes, and what happens when you do have it,
the results.
- Right. Exactly. So first of all, what is knock kneed?
It refers to when you have your knees go in,
and good demonstration, there we go,
goes in and your feet go out.
It looks just like that.
Some people are born with it.
- Right.
- Genetic. Other people throughout the lifespan,
as they get older, they become
- They develop it.
- They develop. Exactly.
So let's talk about it.
This is also known as genu valgus as a medical term.
I believe that's Latin term. Genu refers to the knee.
Valgus refers to the going outward of the lower leg.
- Sure.
- And the other thing, as far as genetics
that causes this, is it can start in your feet.
If you're a flat-footed person or pronated person,
and you don't do anything to correct it with footwear,
then, well I don't know,
can you get down here a little bit?
- [Bob] This'll be a little tougher.
- Here let's take a shoe off.
Okay.
- If this part is flattening out.
- [Brad] Like that. See when that flattens,
see what happens to the knee?
- It pulls the knee in right away.
- [Brad] Right. And this doesn't happen
in a week or even a few months.
It may take years or decades
as someone's foot slowly pronates more and more.
The knee goes in and in, and I have seen,
and I'm sure you have, too, Bob,
seen some severely, absolutely genu valgus knees.
- [Bob] Yep. Over time.
It just develops.
- Another thing is the muscles
in the adductors - right in here, the groin muscles.
If they're tight, and they pull the knees in.
And a lot of times this isn't just one of these causes.
It can be all three.
It can be genetic, it can be the footwear,
it can be tight muscles.
Some of the activities they do.
There's no one right answer.
- Are you gonna talk about loose ligaments too, Brad?
- Yeah. We can talk about that.
- Ligaments attach bone to bone.
- Right.
- So like this ligament attaches this bone to this bone,
and if that gets stretched out
and doesn't hold the knee in place as well,
you're gonna be more prone
to developing either valgus or varus.
- Sure. And that would be the MCL.
That's a good point.
And what this can cause, a big problem, is in the knee joint
you're much more-developed arthritis
in the lateral compartment, or the outside of the knee.
- [Bob] Yeah. Show that Brad.
- So if you can zoom in here, Lonnie,
if you have genu valgus, or knock knee,
this is what's going on.
You have a gap here between these, this side of the joint,
which means it's not gonna wear out near as fast.
- [Bob] So on this side, there's a gap.
- [Brad] And over here, excessive pressure,
and it's being scrunched together,
approached together.
That compressive forces are going to wear out
that cartilage much quicker.
And these are the people that are gonna go in for surgery.
But now they have a surgery where they only
could replace half of the knee joint.
I've got someone right now
- [Bob] I've had that too.
- [Brad] Yep. So that's kind of a good thing.
And also genu valgus, or knock knee, can be corrected
through surgery when you have a knee replacement.
I think more so when you have a total knee,
they can actually correct it through surgery.
And it's kinda neat.
- [Bob] It's a problem though if they correct one side
and don't correct the other side.
They have to keep that into a
- Right. Exactly.
That's up to the surgeon.
- The other thing is a person with a wider pelvis
is gonna be more likely to possibly have genu valgus.
- Right. So maybe more susceptible to females.
- Right. Exactly.
- I don't know the stats on that,
so I'm not gonna talk for certainty.
- So the problems become
you're stretching out those ligaments in the middle.
You're developing arthritis on the outside.
- It can put stresses on the hip joints,
causing some problems up there.
The walking, your balance can be thrown off.
- And it can cause you to be flat-footed, too, couldn't it?
The knee could start causing you to be flat-footed.
- Which comes first, the chicken or the egg?
You can discuss that for hours.
- So today, on this video, we were talking
about basically the causes and the results of those issues,
but we're gonna also show you how to do exercises
to try to prevent this.
- Right. But we're gonna put that on another video
so you don't have to listen to us for such a long time,
because we know what that can cause.
- I'll link this here when we get it done.
It may not be done yet, but when it is done,
it'll be linked.
Thanks.