In this video, I'm going to cover with you the top seven reasons for pain behind the
knee on the back of the knee. After I cover the reasons, I'm going to talk about the root
problems for most of these reasons, so that you can know where to begin fixing your knee problem.
My name is Dr. David Middaugh, and I'm a specialist physical therapist at El Paso manual
physical therapy. And this channel is dedicated to helping people stay healthy, active and mobile,
while avoiding unnecessary surgery, injections and pain medications. Please consider subscribing
to our channel so that you don't miss out on any of the helpful videos we post every single week.
Before I go into the reasons for pain behind the knee, I need to let you know that I've got a bunch
of links for playlist down in the description below this video. So after you watch this video,
go look at those links for the playlist. So you can get more specific help on most
of the problems that I'm covering in this video with you today. So let's get to it.
Reason number one for pain behind the knee is knee arthritis. What a lot of people don't realize is
that when you have knee arthritis, most people experience pain on the front and on the inside
of the knee sometimes on the outside of the knee. But that knee joint is on the back as
well. The whole knee joint is joint. And you can see right in here, these big bumps right here,
these parts of the thigh bone, they when the knee bends, it comes into contact with the shin bone.
And so you can get arthritis on the surface of this part of the bone right here,
which is on the back side of your knee. So a lot of people don't realize that when you get
a keenness, pain, discomfort, even swelling on the backside of the knee, it could be related to the
surface of the joints on the backside of the knee that's arthritic. Some of the common signs of
having the arthritis are stiffness, especially in the morning, or after sitting for a long time and
then going to go get up and walk that stiffness can be really bad, there might also be swelling.
and in extreme cases of knee arthritis, you might have a loss of motion like where you can't fully
straighten out your knee or fully bend your knee. Reason number two, and it's kind of related
to the knee arthritis one, but it's a more specific condition. It's called a baker cyst,
and what a baker cyst is on the backside of the knee, the joint capsule, or it's another
word for all the ligaments that cover up the joint and hold the fluid inside the
joints called synovial. Fluid or joint fluid, the joint capsule on the back of the knee is
kind of a vulnerable spot in the knee joint. And if you have an excess of fluid development
inside the knee, because of bad forces going through the knee, it's a response of the joints
to generate more fluid. And if that fluid isn't reabsorbed, because the pressure isn't removed
that extra pressure, then what can happen in the back of the joint is that the joint
capsule or the ligaments there can start to bubble out and form what's called a baker cyst.
Sometimes it's painful, sometimes it's not sometimes they're very severe, where they bulge
out quite a bit and impede how you can bend your knees and allow you to bend your knee very well.
Sometimes they're completely painless. And in some cases, they actually rupture a burst
and the fluid can trickle down into the calf area. We go into way more detail about Baker cysts in
our other videos. So don't forget to go find that playlist in the description below this video.
Reason number three is a muscle strain, there's a bunch of muscles in the area,
the most infamous muscles for being injured in the back of the knee will be will be your
hamstring muscles, those muscles start up in the glute area and then they run down and attach
actually to the sides of your knee. So if you have a hamstring strain or a
pulled hamstring problem and it's affecting the back of the knee, you typically don't feel it
right in the middle of the back of the knee. It's more off to the outsides of the knee.
But there are some muscles that are right in the back including the popliteus muscle.
And then there's some other muscles that run from the bottom of the calf muscles,
specifically the gastrocnemius muscle I know it's a big name, it's one of the calf muscles,
and it runs up over the joints on the backside. And that one can also be affected,
you might have a sprain or pull that muscle that could be causing pain in the back of
the knee. muscle strains usually come from one of two reasons. One is you overdid it somehow,
like you just did way more activity than you were prepared for you weren't in shape to do
all that walking or running or that level of exercise, or you just had to be on your feet and
be active for much longer than you anticipated. And you overdid it or two you've got a muscle
imbalance meaning you're overcompensating with these muscles that you've pulled or injured,
and there's some other muscles that aren't doing their job. And in order to fix this
chronic muscle strain that you might be dealing with, you got to fix that muscle imbalance.
Reason number four for pain on the back of the knee is sciatica. Sciatica refers to inflammation
of the sciatic nerve that runs down the back of the thigh, the back of the knee, and then it
splits in a bunch of different directions. And it sends nerves into the lower leg. It changes
names at that point. So they don't typically call it sciatica when it goes into your calf,
ankle or foot but you can get symptoms that go all the way down there.
But right behind the knee is where a bunch of branches come off the sciatic nerve.
And so if you've got an irritated sciatic nerve, a can refer pain into the back of
the knee and cause discomfort whenever you're going to straighten out your knee or moving.
But typically if you've got sciatica, there's going to be other signs associated with this
like back pain, hip pain, or pain down into your lower leg, even into the ankle and foot all the
way up into the toes because the sciatic nerve does send nerves all the way into those areas.
We've got an entire playlist that goes into a lot of detail about the different types of sciatica,
because there's different treatments for different types of sciatica, so be sure to check that out.
Reason number five is a ligament problem. Ligaments connect bones to bones inside of
a joint. And in the knee, you've got some very important ligaments, the Big Four that everybody
talks about are going to be your LCL, your lateral collateral ligament, your MCL on the inside
your medial collateral ligament and then on the inside of the knee and deep within the knee.
You've got two ligaments that criss cross each other. They're called the ACL and the PCL,
that that stands for the anterior cruciate ligament, that's the most
infamous one that gets injured and then the PCL is a posterior cruciate ligament,
if you have an injury to specifically the PCL that is typically associated with pain behind the knee.
But the fact is that injury to any one of these ligaments can cause an instability of the knee
which can refer pain to the backside of the knee, it can increase the pressures
and affect that Baker cyst. If you have some sort of ligament injury in your knee, you bet
it might be causing pain behind your knee. A key important treatment factor for healing
a ligament in your knee is bracing it I'm not talking any simple brace; you've got to use a
specific brace with brackets. Again, we've got tons of videos that talk about braces
and ligament problems down in the description. Reason number six is a deep vein thrombosis in the
medical community, it's often called the DVT for shorts. And what it is, is a blood clot that forms
in the lower leg in the calf area. Typically, there's some major veins that run
up the back of the leg and thigh. And as it passes through here, it can cause a lot of swelling,
redness, pain, and it can hurt right behind the knee. And if you ever go to the doctor, or if
you're in the hospital and you have pain behind your knee or the back of your leg, that's one of
the first things are going to screen you out and for good reason because a deep vein thrombosis
is a blood clot and if that blood clot travels up towards your heart and lungs, you can be in
big trouble. It is deadly in a lot of cases not always, but it can cause some serious problems.
DVTs typically happen when somebody sedentary like bedridden for days on end, or like if they're in
a coma or for whatever reason, they just cannot move their legs as somebody who's like paraplegic,
somebody you can't walk or use your legs very much. If you're having knee pain that might
be you thought you might not be moving very much. And if you don't get much activity in
your lower legs that causes the blood to pool, which can make you susceptible to blood clots.
You're especially susceptible if you've got any sort of circulation problems or heart conditions.
If you think that you're dealing with a DVT you've got redness and swelling on the back of your leg,
in the calf area, the back of the knee or in pain associated with that you should get to
your doctor asap and get screened for a DVT to make sure that you're safe. And finally,
reason number seven for pain on the back of the knee is going to be a meniscus problem.
A meniscus is a chunk of cartilage that's right between the thigh bone and the shin bone,
you actually have a pair of menisci in each knee. So you have four minutes guy between both of your
knees. You have a medial meniscus on this side and a lateral meniscus on this side. And they're very
important chunks of cartilage that help to cushion the weight of the body above the knee joint on
the shin bone below the knee joint and they also offer some congruency or they make the joints more
shaped to fit each other better. meniscus injuries are very common, especially meniscus tears.
They are commonly operated on they do surgical techniques called meniscectomy is where they
cut off a chunk of the meniscus or they can repair the meniscus as well.
And it's thought to not heal very well because of its poor blood supply. Although it can heal it can
scar down and oftentimes people can get away without surgery. Despite having had a meniscus
tear, they can get back to feeling better and being very active without ever having surgery.
It's often muscle imbalances and knee joint alignment problems
that lead to meniscus injuries, meniscus tears, and we talked about that a good amount here on
our channel. So go check out that description below to find the link for our playlists on
knee meniscus problems. So that covers the top seven reasons for pain behind the knee.
Now let me cover with you the root problems for most of these reasons because if you understand
these problems and can begin to address these problems, you can prevent your pain behind the
knee from becoming worse and setting you up for some bad situation like having to get any
replacements or some unnecessary surgery that if you got better natural You could completely avoid.
Number one is overdoing it. If you're the zealous type the person that's kind of intense, the person
that doesn't like to back down from a challenge a competitive type, and you tend to put your body
through a lot. You need to avoid overdoing it need to pay attention to what your body's telling you,
if you know that you're putting yourself through walking or physical activities, some sport.
Whatever it is that you're doing, playing with your kids, or your grandkids, and you know,
you're going to pay for it in your knees the next day is not a good idea, you need to begin
to find your limits, put up some boundaries with what you can and can't do, it is important for
you to be active, but within your limits that your knees can take right now, because if you
keep flaring it up, you might just be a few flare ups away from some major knee problem.
Now this is especially important if you're dealing with a ligament problem like an ACL or PCL injury,
or some sort of muscle strain, you probably have tended to overdo it. And kind of related
to this. Another root problem is muscle imbalances, which we talked about at length
in a lot of our videos. muscle imbalances are when there's muscles that are too strong on one side of
the body and too weak on the other side of the body. And it changes the mechanics and forces at
the joint which causes inappropriate rubbing. The body reacts to it in ways that typically
are detectable on X rays or MRIs, but it causes pain. These muscle imbalances can be
fixed naturally by doing the right kinds of exercises and by moving better. In fact,
we've got a whole program devoted to fixing muscle imbalances that lead to common knee problems.
It's called the 28 day knee health and wellness boost program. You can learn more about it
in the description below. It's a 100% online and on demand program that helps you to address the
root muscle imbalance problem that is setting up your knee issue. Go check it out if you want to
learn more. If you have a chronic ligament problem like the ACL, MCL PCL MCL issue, you need to be
in a knee brace, I can't stress that enough. Go check out our playlist about knee braces
and about ligament problems. You'll learn plenty about why it's so important. If you're dealing
with an old ligament injury and ACL injury, for instance, a sprain or an MCL sprain and
you have not been wearing a knee brace to the right point in time to fix your knee problem.
Because you don't need to wear any brace forever. But you do need to wear one for a certain period
of time. They need to go learn about what those timeframes are for you. What kind of brace is
best for you, and you need to just troubleshoot it because you should be able to fix this problem for
good and not have a recurring chronic knee problem that sets you up for arthritis later in life.
And finally, if you've got sciatica, there's usually some core problem and what I mean by
core is your lower back, your abdomen, your hips, kind of the middle part of your body,
there's likely some imbalance or some weakness there that needs to be addressed
for your sciatica problem to get better. Oftentimes, when I see sciatica problems here
in the clinic in the back of someone's knee, the first thing you have to do is go up into the hips
go up into the spine, the lower back and see what kinds of problems are there and oftentimes I find
weak abdominals, weak glute muscles, and then I go down into the feet as well and I find that weak
toe flexors, the muscles that curl the toes can contribute to a sciatica problem as well.
Again, we've got a playlist down in the description that goes into sciatica problems
at length. Hey friends, I hope this video was helpful for you please like this video
and share it with somebody that has pain behind their knee that needs to learn this information.
Thanks so much for watching, and I'll see in the next video friends. Bye