Meniscus Tears
- By Chris Hardwicke
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- 01 Jul, 2018
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Do they happen at the gym?
A degenerative meniscus tear is an entirely different animal. These may occur in the most innocuous of circumstances. Dr. Donald O’Malley is (according to the Duke Health.org website) a knee expert. He says that something as “simple as turning to put the dishes away” can cause a tear. Houston Orthopaedic surgeon Dr. Mark Maffet says meniscus tears “can happen asymptomatically and only later begin to cause problems. The more common tear in people over 30 is from simply squatting in the garden or getting something from a lower cabinet. They don’t often give symptoms until later when the patient is more active. The knee will then hurt and often swell.” WebMD, a popular internet health site echoes the others; “If you are older and your meniscus is worn, you may not know what you did to cause the tear. You may only remember feeling pain after you got up from a squatting position, for example”. Pain and slight swelling are often the only symptoms. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons website says “just an awkward twist when getting up from a chair may be enough to cause a tear if the menisci have weakened with age.” Possibly the most respected knee clinic in this country is the Steadman Clinic in Vail Colorado. Dr. Robert F. LaPrade is a complex knee and sports medicine specialist at the clinic. He says meniscus tears in older adults can occur “with minor or seemingly trivial trauma such as deep flexion or squatting”. My client Catherine M. has degenerative menisci in her family. By age 50 both of her sisters, her mother and Catherine had lost almost all of the meniscus in both knees.
Frontier Movement is designed to put the body through ALL movement possibilities in the full range of motion. We have put more people “back-in-the-game” than any gym in Columbia. We have many clients over 60 and even 70 doing full depth squats with no knee problems. In fact, I sense that regular full depth squatting has a connection to a healthy meniscus in the same fashion that loose pants will not tear when you squat. By lengthening tendons and ligaments and reducing joint compression one might indeed lessen compression on the menisci.
An easy test you can perform is to squat butt-to-heels. If you have not performed a squat this deep for years, you should hold on to something belly button high to control the lowering and assist you later in your effort to stand. Settle fully into your squat, lifting the heels if only as necessary. Look at the face of the knee. The whole area will be white, indicating poor blood flow. As we train full depth, beginning with arm assisted squats, we notice that the knee soon loses this white and tight presentation. I suspect that this increased blood flow is the primary reason that we see so much knee healing in general at Frontier Movement.
Many of you know that I was an Olympic trials cyclist but you may not know that because of a torn meniscus I retired. In truth, I was getting a little old but my knee was the decision maker. For the next 15 years I would feel knee pain when going hard on the bike.
When I began Frontier Movement there were several deep lateral movements that caused quite a bit of pain in my knee. I suspected that these were pieces of my torn meniscus getting into the articulate workings of my knee and I assumed the same movements would polish these pieces smooth or move them to the margins where they would cause no pain. Within two years, I had no knee pain regardless of the exercise. Three years into Frontier Movement, I tried hard cycling and for the first time in 10 years and found that no level of exertion can create pain in my knee.
If you have symptoms of a meniscus tear you should consult with a reputable knee Doc and decide if your tear merits surgery or if exercise alone might do the trick. If the pain is new, most of them agree that waiting 4 weeks or so is judicious as the pain may be greatly diminished or even gone.
We are fight or flight, hunting and gathering animals. In our DNA are all the tools for energy creation. Through the Kreb’s cycle, we can convert ALL food to energy. We can live in excess of 40 days on water alone. We can walk 300 miles without anything other than water. Though it is occasionally not evident, we are the most highly evolved animals on Earth.
To better understand how we create more energy, we would do well to visualize a spiral. If we follow the line of the spiral we see that it moves up and then levels out, reaching an ever-increasing height. The same is true when we create energy. Our energy levels cannot simply rise straight up. We must also level out to create energy (rest).
If you have been sedentary for a long time and one day you decide to go jogging for a couple of miles, you will be tired for several days after. You will need to rest. Tiredness is the downside of the spiral. From just that one run, you have created more energy that is yours to use AFTER recovery. This increased energy is the upswing of the spiral. If you continue to run and rest, the spiral will go up and level out with the net result being a gain in energy. Our heart becomes bigger and our lungs more toned, the relevant jogging muscles are stronger and more efficient.
To return to our car analogy, our engine has become bigger and stronger. When running a couple of miles no longer challenges us we have ADAPTED to our running regimen. At this point, if we do not run faster, farther or longer we will not continue to increase our energy. Our current level of running will MAINTAIN our current level of ADAPTATION (energy level). If we stop running we will gradually go back down the spiral. If we do not allow for full recovery through proper sleep we will also see a drop in performance. Sleep is an important part of the leveling out of the spiral.
In a nutshell, we must work hard enough to go higher “up” the spiral, and then rest, through which we will adapt to higher and higher levels of energy.
You can feed all the fuel you want to a weak engine and it will still not go faster. You can cleanse the fuel lines all you want and you will not increase YOUR performance if your engine is small and weak.
We have total control of our energy level. We are responsible for creating our own energy. If you do not have any, you have created the weak engine I am talking about. It is very easy to look to cleanses and supplements, but a strong engine can run very well for a long time on junk food, much as putting cheap gas in your car often takes 100,000 miles to have a negative effect.
In our car analogy, we fixed everything but the engine and still we had no better performance. A big difference between human engines and car engines is that if you park your car in the garage for a few years, the engine remains just as powerful. The human engine, however, will actually shrink. Your entire system can get clogged by parking it on the couch too long and not taking it out for a good drive once in a while. If you only drive it to work and back it won’t continue to run well for long. You will see what I mean when you finally “floor it” and black smoke pours out of the exhaust! It may even stall! Quick, before it’s too late, let’s make this thing run right, faster, and longer.
Why don’t you have some coffee, sugar, or fruit? That ought to pick you up! How about an energy drink with some wild sounding jungle herbs? Most of us regularly look for energy in a particular food or drink and we are eventually forced to acknowledge that it does not work.
We have an epidemic of blood sugar problems (hypoglycemia) that affect an estimated 60% of this country. In fact, most companies give workers a break at 10 a.m. and often this is not because they are generous, but productivity has markedly slowed. At this point you have only been at work for two, at most three, hours! Certainly you are not already out of energy. Notice that your break room is filled with caffeine, candy, and salty and sweet carbohydrates in hopes of kicking you back into productivity.
Further notice that the great ‘medication stations”—convenience stores— that are filled from one end to the other with these items! I can fix your “Blood Sugar” problem such that you can fully access energy you already have, but that will NOT create more!
Many alternative modalities promise to remove “blocks” to your energy or increase the flow of energy. Often “cleansing” of some type is recommended. Notice that removing blocks and increasing FLOW are NOT the same as creating MORE energy. For a better understanding of energy, I shall use a car for my analogy.
Let’s say that the tube that carries gasoline to the engine (the fuel line) is clogged. The car runs poorly. When you clear the “blockage” you “increase the flow” of fuel to the engine. While this is important and I often recommend energy-flow work, you will NOT have MORE energy, but full access to the energy you already had.
How about if the carburetor is not mixing the air and gasoline correctly? Again the car runs poorly. Many vitamin and supplements companies make “increased-energy” claims based on improving your fuel mix. While supplements and diet can sometimes correct nutritional deficiencies, you will only have better fuel, not more fuel. This is very important as better fuel is necessary for high performance. Many people in third world countries suffer from malnutrition and cannot perform well. However, you and I are likely getting everything we need for our day-to-day performance and even our “weekend warrior” athletics. Body builders, high school, college and professional athletes may well need supplements if their diet is less than perfect but I’m willing to bet that quality fuel is not your problem.
For now, let’s assume that your fuel system is clean enough and you eat a good enough diet. If this is the case, and most often it is, the cause of your lack of energy is that your motor is small and inefficient and that nothing you put in the gas tank can change that!
