Host: Welcome to the Lifelong Wellness podcast where we talk wellness professionals from so many walks of life from around the world and get their insight to living healthier. I'm your host, Wes Malik. Living well is all about managing the challenges that life throws at us. And sometimes in our daily lives while we are working or maybe even exercising or having fun and doing an outdoor even in indoor activity, life could throw us a curveball and we could injure ourselves. And that injury means that we can't live to our full potential in our work, in our education, in our lives, with our families and we have to step back. And sometimes those injuries and that pain can live with us for a short period of time and sometimes a longer period of time, sometimes indefinitely. Now I consider myself to be a young man, but I'm not prone to injury. Just the other day I was reaching behind the sofa and I twisted my body in such a way while reaching forward and I pop something in my chest. I literally heard a loud click and then after that I was unable to raise my arm above my head for about a day or two. It's just a small example of doing absolutely nothing and injuring yourself so it could happen to any of us and the best of us. How do we manage those injuries? How do we manage that pain? That's what we’re going to talk about today with our expert Bill Parravano, who’s basically an expert in one very specific kind of pain and that is knee pain. And he like to dispel some myths and offer a fresh new perspective on relieving knee pain. Now I can go on to stories about how I was hiking in the Himalayas on a management training program and on the way down how I also damage my knee. I think possibly for permanently and I'm sure you have stories like that to relate to as well. So that's what we’re going to ask Bill about today. He's had over 25 years of martial art and bodywork experience and he understands movement and tensions patterns that lead to physical pain. And he believes the nervous system holds the key to the body's healing. It bridges gaps between what we currently know and the infinite number of possibilities for the body to heal in the realm of what we don't know. And it's this combination that creates the shortest distance between a life riddled with pain to a high quality fully expressed physical life. Hi Bill, welcome to the show.
Bill: Thank you, I’m happy to be here.
Host: Let me start off by asking you, you specialize in knee pain and you market yourself that same way. You call yourself the Knee Pain Guru and that's your email address, that's your website. It's very very specific. Why only the knee, Bill?
Bill: My entire life changed when I injured my knee.
Host: Okay. (laughing)
Bill: And that led me in a very different path.
Host: Yeah.
Bill: And when I got on the other side of the injury, had reconstructive surgery on a ligament in my left knee, the surgery, the physical therapy, my entire life was different. And at the time I had changed so much to compensate for the knee where I was able to heal my knee it just made perfect sense that I would evolve into that area of specialty.
Host: So the catalyst being your knee has become and is defined what you are today, the Knee Pain Guru.
Bill: That's correct.
Host: Alright, so how did all this happen? Tell me the story about when did you first injure your knee, what happened?
Bill: It was less than glamorous. (Both laughing) I wish I could say something wonderful happened but I got invited to go skiing.
Host: Okay.
Bill: A friend of mine who is a chiropractor, of all people, invited me to go skiing in Sumter, Indiana, of all places.
Host: Indiana? Okay.
Bill: Yeah, like does Indiana even have hills? (Both laughing) He’s inviting me to go skiing.
Host: Okay.
Bill: So I ended up in South East Indiana, I don't remember the name of the ski slope but I haven't gone skiing much in my life. I think at that point it was the third time. You’re going up the chairlift and you have to slide off the chairlift on your skis down this hill that looks huge to me. And of course I want to take it real slow so I’m cutting to my left. I’m doing the, what the little kids call it? It’s like where you make a pie with your ski tips as opposed to closer together?
Host: Look, I'll take a guess at it. It’s called snowplowing?
Bill: I think so. So I'm trying to snowplow and my left ski gets caught on a patch of ice and my right ski hits soft snow so I kind of do my toes are pointing together and I do a split and a face plant.
Host: Oh.
Bill: And I did everything I could to keep from getting sick right there at the ski slope.
Host: Okay.
Bill: Not really knowing what happened. I had this horrible pain in my left leg. And of course they had the e-basket where they ski you down the hill on the little toboggan kind of thing.
Host: Alright.
Bill: And my buddy who is a chiropractor skied down to the bottom and pop my knee back in the place. And I thought, well I’ve rested, just like any other injury I had in my life I would be okay. Knee kept, wasn’t having it. When it would dislocate it would pop out.
Host: Oh really? Again after that.
Bill: Yes, I had hindsight at towards 20/20 and I ended up dislocating my left knee another three times and had realized I was partially tearing it, the ligament, the ACL in my left knee, each of those four times.
Host: So you’re repeatedly injuring your own knee?
Bill: Correct.
Host: As we speak it's weird, as we speak. I'm holding onto my knees. I don't know why. (laughing)
Bill: Yeah, it will make you cringe.
Host: Yeah. So, did you seek medical attention right away?
Bill: After the fourth time.
Host: But you waited?
Bill: Yes.
Host: Okay.
Bill: My learning curve is a little flat and I was 28, 29 years old when thinking I was invincible.
Host: Yeah, every young man thinks they're invincible. (laughing)
Bill: Until that one injury. (laughing) Yes, after the fourth knee dislocation, that was on softball field, and I threw the first base and the next thing I know I was clutching my left knee and screaming. And teammates carried me off the field and I thought, “You know, I probably better do something for this. This is not a good thing.” I went to the best orthopaedic surgeon I can find in Louisville Kentucky, where I lived at the time. Dr. John Ellis, he does all of the surgeries for the University of Louisville Cardinals, the sports teams.
Host: Right.
Bill: And he did one of those tests, a test, a laxity in the ligaments and he said, “You know, we can do an MRI but it would be a waste of money. You tore the ACL on your left knee, the anterior cruciate ligament”. And it didn’t take me very much time to say, “Well let's schedule the surgery.” Until a month later, they did a patellar replacement so they replaced the ligament in my left knee.
Host: They actually replaced a ligament?
Bill: Yes.
Host: What did they replace it with? Another ligament?
Bill: A tendon, actually.
Host: Oh.
Bill: The type of surgery that they did they use either a patellar tendon, a hamstring, graft or a cadaver.
Host: Oh.
Bill: You know, like when you check off your driver’s license, a donor card…
Host: Organ donor, yeah.
Bill: Yes, so they did a patellar replacement so they sliced apart of my patellar tendon out and used pins to replace the ligament in my left knee.
Host: So did the operation help you? Did it fix your knee?
Bill: Well, in a certain sense, yes it did. It corrected what was torn in the knee. Two pieces of meniscus taken out of my left knee, I had the reconstructive surgery on the ligament, the Anterior Cruciate Ligament, in my left knee using my patellar tendon as a reconstructive tool to do that. And from an anatomical perspective or a medical perspective, my knee was “fixed”. And after the surgery, Dr. Ellis said, “Get your left knee. This is going to physical therapy. Get your left knee within 80% of the strength of the right knee and that would then allow you to resume normal activities.”
Host: Okay.
Bill: So that was my goal, getting my left leg within 80% of the strength of my right and I did that. And within three months I accomplish that, but I still have lots of swelling and pain, of stiffness in the joint, I was limping which translated in my hips and lower back. So there's a lot of other issues that happened as a result of the knee. And even though Dr. Ellis fixed what was going on, there was still sorts of problems that didn't make sense in my mind, in my 29-year-old mind at the time. It was like, well, he fixed the ligament. This is supposed to work just like changing tires on a car. Like when you put new tires on a car and you brake so it’s supposed to work.
Host: Right, okay.
Bill: And the body, unfortunately, doesn't quite work that way. And that painful realization led me on my journey to discover what was going to get my knee feeling normal again.
Host: Throughout this whole period, you know, several months after, you know, you popping out you knee for the fourth time, getting surgery. How did all this affect your life like your day-to-day routine?
Bill: It was miserable because all my attention went on my knee. I was afraid to step or turn. There’s like fear that builds up in a person's body when they lose trust that their knee is going to be able to be there and support them. Think of a relationship. The more you put into a relationship and you do things to build that relationship that makes that relationship strong. And every time someone lies to you or does something that breaks that trust, you trust that person less and less. And this is what was happening with my knee. Each time I dislocated it, there was less and less trust that my knee would be able to support me that I would be able to run, that I would be able to jump. Well, my main love was judo. I love throwing people so I love going out in the judo mat and really mixing it up as far as fighting. When you can't trust your knee, there's no way I was feeling comfortable to get out on the mat and compete with anybody.
Host: So that led you to studying…What did you study? I understand that that's the reason you became interested in the science, in the knowledge of knee pain, but what was the next step? Did you go back to school for it?
Bill: Well, at the time I owned a computer company. It was a real natural transition to start going to bodywork classes.
Host: Okay.
Bill: And I say that with tongue-in-cheek, of course.
Host: Of course.
Bill: There's this place where I had was going to different modalities of bodywork to try to get my body back to feeling normal again, massage, acupuncture, Jin Shin Jyutsu, Jin Shin Do, some energy work, Reiki, hands on healing, healing touch, rolfing. I tried everything that I could. One of the women, that I had been seeing for some of the Chinese medicine that I was getting for my knee, she had said, “I’m having a workshop at my retreat center, would you like to go? I think this would really resonate with you”. And I said sure so I showed up. And of course I'm in a room full of doctors and nurses and massage therapists, chiropractors, like all these medical professionals that's their day job. And I own a computer company and I remember going up to the instructor I was like, “Are you sure it's okay that I'm here?” because I felt like you do remember Sesame Street. One of these kids is doing his own thing, one of these kids is not like the other.
Host: One of these things doesn't belong here, one of these things isn’t the same. Right, yeah at the foursquare. (laughing)
Bill: That was me in this class. And then the instructor starts and she goes ortho bionomy and osteopathically-based style of bodywork founded by a British osteopath who was also a judo instructor. And he took the principles of judo and applied it to an osteopathic concept to develop an entire style of bodywork.
Host: Uh-huh.
Bill: Yeah exactly, “uh-huh”. Wow! Well, look at that! I might be in a good place. So, the advantage I had in a class like that is I had nothing to unlearn. The doctors, the chiropractors, the nurses, the physical therapists, everybody in that class already had a paradigm that they were learning through, a lens that they were looking at the body through.
Host: And you were a completely clean slate.
Bill: Right. And I had nothing to unlearn which meant when we were working on the body and we were talking about putting the body in a position of comfort, there was nothing in my head going, “Where's the origin insertion of this muscle?” How does this innovate with the blah, blah, blah. All of the conversations that were happening with all the other students in that class, I was just going, “Oh, yeah! Number 2 feels better number 1. We’ll go with that.” And it was in a way it sounds super simplistic. However, in healing of the body, that's what's required. We have to have almost like a childlike perspective as to where pain is as well as where pain isn't. My ignorance in that class was my advantage because I have nothing to unlearn.
Host: Incredible. Let's get to what you learned over the last many years that you’ve been working with knee pain. And I want to get into it like and ask you the most direct question I can get into it. What are the top five myths that surround knee pain? What's going on in the knee there?
Bill: Well, yes and I see dozens of them but we’ll do the top five.
Host: Okay.
Bill: The first one, that it has to hurt to heal. There's this mentality that permeates the conventional medical model that is in society itself that we have to go through pain to get out of pain. And it's almost like there's a deserving component of that, like we don't deserve just to be comfortable. We just don't deserve to have joints that don't hurt, that don't ache, that move easily, that are strong and flexible and mobile. And there's this idea that in order to get out of pain we have to go through pain. And if we’re talking about a healthy knee, pushing through pain? Absolutely. Knees healthy, there's nothing wrong with the knee, the knee doesn't start out in pain. Pushing the body, pushing the joints is a good thing but when we start out in pain, pushing through pain will never ever get us out of pain. It's not like two negatives make a positive in that situation and that is the first myth is that it has to hurt to heal.
Host: I see.
Bill: Do you want me to go into like the positive side of that?
Host: Well, you know what? I want to actually ask you. Be it a regular day and we experience a knee pain, knee pain is very common, first of all. You see a lot of people at the tennis court or somewhere. You go to the gym, you know, somebody is wearing one of those knee supports, you know, that you get. They’re blue or black or whatever to the brace to support the knee while you're doing activity and exercise. That means a lot of people out there who experience knee pain. Sometimes we injure the knee, like I mentioned a little while earlier, with me just hiking downhill, you know, I did something to my knee. I don't know what. The question I want to ask you is, who should we see first when we experience a knee pain? What should we do?
Bill: Great question. Don't do what Bill did. (laughing) The first thing is go see a doctor just to make sure that nothing is broken or torn because there's two different types of knee pain. One, where there’s something broken or torn which needs to be addressed from a medical perspective, absolutely. If you go to the doctor and the doctor goes, “Well your knee is fine. Do RICE therapy, rest, ice compression and elevation. Take them Tylenol or Advil or Nuprin and then let it rest.” Then there's nothing physically wrong with the knee, you’re only talking about nerve irritation.
Host: Okay.
Bill: Nerve irritation is a distinct difference than something anatomically wrong with the knee.
Host: Okay.
Bill: Most of those people that are on the tennis court with those neoprene braces, blue. They do not have the skill set to know how to get their knee out of pain, so they deserve to be out on that court and pushing their knee.
Host: Right.
Bill: They’re setting themselves up for further injuries like Bill, remember? He dislocated his left knee four times.
Host: Right.
Bill: He got the clue before he got the hint. Though it’s important, go to the doctor first to know what you're dealing with. If anything, it's going to give you the clarity to know how to move forward with the strategy whether it be conventional medical model, whether it be an alternative approach, natural approach or an integrative approach that incorporates both conventional and alternative approach.
Host: Okay. So when you say nerve irritation, what is it? How can we make it better? Is it supposed to go away or are we supposed to make sure that the nerves are not irritated at all? How do we accomplish that?
Bill: How we accomplish it is working with the intrinsic movement of the joint. An intrinsic movement of the joint, most people are familiar with the gross motor movement, which is extension and flexion. So leg out straight and then heal your butt, that's gross motor movement
Host: Got it.
Bill: Intrinsic movement is the little nuance to movement, like let's say you're twisting, pushing yourself to get out of the car. That’s a nuance movement.
Host: Right.
Bill: So there's intrinsic movement for the joint to slightly twists, slightly move side to side, forward and back, apart and together and tilting. And those intrinsic movements are what squeezes on the nerves and irritates them causing the pain.
Host: I see.
Bill: And the way to create comfort is to work in those intrinsic movements, getting the pressure off of those tiny little nerves to begin to change the neurological signaling coming from your nervous system, your brain, your spinal cord down to the nerves in your knee that says the knee has to hurt.
Host: So who does that for us? Is it a chiropractor, is it a physical therapy or is it a specialist like you, who knows in detail about the knee? Who do we go to to alleviate the pain from those nuances?
Bill: That's what I teach clients to do online.
Host: Okay.
Bill: I have programs where I educate clients how to do this for themselves.
Host: Right.
Bill: Because your knee can hurt on the tennis court, your knee can hurt when you're on a hike in the Himalayas or wherever it is. So you can sit down on a rock or on a bench or a stone and you can work with your knee to get it out of pain so it doesn't embed a dysfunctional neurology that causes further issues down the road.
Host: A lot of people will just take painkillers and work through the pain. Is that part of the myths that you’re going to tell us about?
Bill: No. (laughing)
Host: Okay.
Bill: I have another one.
Host: Okay, what is it?
Bill: The second one is strengthening the legs will make knee pain go away.
Host: Won’t it ain’t though?
Bill: No.
Host: Okay. How so?
Bill: It’s timing. Think of it like baking a cake. You have to have the right ingredients, in the right amounts, in the right order with the right timing. And when you do that correctly you have a cake. And if you do it out of order, you generally have a mess.
Host: True.
Bill: So getting out of knee pain is very much the same way. In strengthening the legs when the knee has just had an injury, you think that the knee had an injury, it changes the neurology, it changes how the leg moves, how we walk, how we feel because pain is a feeling, and how we think because of that pain. Now we going we strengthen the leg with the knee in that place, with the mind in that place, with the emotions in that place, it just reinforces a dysfunctional tension pattern.
Host: Okay.
Bill: So by coming at it from a place of comfort, changing the neurology, getting the knee more comfortable and allowing it to heal. When we come to strengthening the legs down the road, maybe a week, maybe a couple of weeks or a month or a little bit longer, and the body is comfortable. The knee is comfortable, we’re strengthening the legs from a balanced place with the neurology is an irritated try to compensate. It's like trying to build a house on a crooked foundation. It’s not going to work. That's where the second myth is strengthening the legs will make the knee pain go away.
Host: So quick recap before we continue on. Don't do nothing about it, like you and me, or else things could get worse. Secondly, strengthening the leg, going to the gym and, you know, working out the legs is not going to fix the problem with knee pain either. What other mistakes that people make?
Bill: This is good. I like this, Wes, because the third one is resting will make the knee pain better.
Host: Okay.
Bill: We have to have a deeper understanding of what's going on. And when I talk about resting, we have to have strategic resting. Okay, going back to the point resting will make the knee pain better. Think of it like our car, we just got into an accident. Range crooked, we park in the garage. We let it sit for a couple days, a week, a month and then we backed the car out of the garage and go driving it.
Host: Yeah. (laughing)
Bill: Now, the frame’s not going to suddenly straighten out. And this is what happens when people do RICE therapy. They propped their leg up on the couch, they do the rest, the ice, the compression, the elevation. They maybe take painkillers for the pain that they’re feeling in their knee and then they rest it.
Host: But isn’t the rest healing it? Isn’t our body working towards like fixing the problem, like let's say I have a cut I put a bandage on it? After, you know, four days or so the skin is healed and, you know, there's little scar tissue and stuff. Isn’t that’s what’s happening inside the knee?
Bill: To a degree, you're correct, absolutely. And this is why I referred you the way to do it is strategic resting. We have to do it differently than just park in the garden garage.
Host: So what is strategic resting? Can you explain that little bit in detail?
Bill: The rest, ice, compression and elevation is absolutely necessary. And while you're on the couch be working with these with the intrinsic movements of the knee joint to get the pressure off of the nerves, getting the joint to relax more and this is going to speed up the healing process that you’re talking about.
Host: Oh, okay.
Bill: So resting is important, absolutely, but we have to do it strategically in order to make it make the most use of that time while we’re sitting on the couch or sit in a chair, on crutches or whatever the case may be.
Host: I see. How about these aides that we use? You know, the braces or analgesic creams or, you know, medication, do people make mistakes and try to relieve pain with items like those? You know, like off-the-shelf stuff that you can just get off the store like from Walmart or Costco or whatever. Yeah, I could use that for my knee or something like that.
Bill: I suppose it's okay if that's all you know and that's all you have. However, when we approach the body with the deeper understanding of how the neurology works, a lot of that stuff is unnecessary. There's some real simple ways of once we begin to create comfort. And when I talk about create comfort there's a much deeper understanding of that. We’re essentially aligning ourselves up with the neurological capacity of the body to heal. We’re looking at the reflexes that are engaged when the body is put in the position of comfort. And the reflexes that I'm talking about are like, when you go to the doctor and your doctor checks your reflexes, taps your knee with a rubber mallet and your knee jumps you can't control that, we’re doing that in a somewhat intentional way when the doctor taps that but that is just an indication of the power that the neurology holds on a deeper level. When we can bring that from an unconscious or subconscious awareness of how our neurology works to a conscious awareness to begin working with the intrinsic movement of the joint creating comfort and intentionally, strategically creating comfort in the knee joint, one ends up happening is we align ourselves with the neurology's capacity to heal the body and heal it much faster, much quicker. So in the time it takes for you to drive to Costco or the drugstore to get those things your knee could actually feel better where you wouldn't even want or need to use those creams and devices and things like that.
Host: Right. You mentioned in your work, in your website that the nervous system has the ability to heal the body. How does it do that?
Bill: That’s our default. Like when you’re talking about the cut on your finger, your body knows how to do that. How does it know how to do that? It has an innate intuition, has an innate knowledge, intelligence to it. How does it digest food? How do you breathe air? How does it pump blood? How do we think? Like all of these things happen without our conscious awareness of what happens in the body on a daily basis and it happens for anybody that has a nervous system. That's human.
Host: It can automatically process.
Bill: Correct and when we begin to understand how these processes work, we can do things to tweak and adjust and hence, its ability to do what it already does. Like you see people changing their diet to help their digestion, their body already knows how to do that. They’re just maybe eating different foods that on its process, not have as much sugar so they don’t have as many digestive issues or drinking more water helps the body process things easier and it makes the blood pump easier. It's not as hard on the body when it has enough water. And it's the same type of knowledge and intuition we have when work with the intrinsic movement of the joints. And putting the body into that position of comfort, we begin to enhance the body's capacity to heal that it's already trying to do. And if someone is stuck with knee pain that been in pain for weeks, months, years. Some people even decades and their knees haven't been healing, it’s because there's been blocks in the way, preventing their knee from healing, preventing the knee from doing what it wants to do or how the body wants to heal it. And now, what we begin doing is removing those blocks and aligning ourselves with the nervous systems, the neurology's capacity to heal what's going on in the knees. Do let it do its job.
Host: For the knees, there are point of no return. For example, if I've had an injury or I felt knee pain but it goes away but it comes back after a couple of years if I do some strenuous exercise or something. Is it too late to heal that knee or is there a point of no return?
Bill: I would've said no before then I talked to a gentleman the other day and he had a situation where his knees were given out like literally just pop in a joint like mine. And he was going for knee replacement surgery. In that case when there has been such severe damages gone on for an extended period of time and the structure of the knee no longer exists, then I think it's in the best interest of the person to have medical intervention. Like my ligament was torn, no matter how much comfort I was creating my knee, I still have torn ligament.
Host: You needed that operation to fix it. Yeah.
Bill: Right. However, the majority of the people that think that they need that they're too far gone or it's been too long, or the injury happened when they were name the age, name the diagnosis, it doesn't really matter because all pain originates from nerve irritation and all we need to do is begin to retrain the neurology and how the body can begin to let go of that tension, getting the pressure off of the nerves, setting up the conditions so the body can heal. It has the resources that needs to heal it and then avoid self-sabotage. That's the biggest thing is people go back and do things that actually throw their body back in the pain.
Host: So you have over 25 years of martial arts and bodywork experience and you mentioned you do judo. What kind of martial arts do you do?
Bill: Judo I did for 15-ish years, some around in there then I got involved in the Russian martial arts called Systema.
Host: Okay.
Bill: There’s a huge healing component in systema that I brought into my program.
Host: Okay.
Bill: As far as breathing, movement, relaxation, strengthening of tendons and ligaments and fascia in the joints, so there was the martial art, the system. I brought a huge component into my program, my approach from the Russian martial art system.
Host: And you help people virtually. I know people come to you, you know, and come and see you but you help people all around the world on all six continents. Did I miss any? I got it right and you do that or your website is thekneepainguru.com your email addresses and you have a contact page there as well so people get in touch with you. It's [email protected] but how does that work? How do you deal with patients virtually? How does that work?
Bill: Well, I would ask them what's going on with their knee? Where does it hurt? And after a while there's a pattern. There's only so many places in the knee the knee could hurt. And what I've done is I've created videos that instruct people how to get the pressure off of the nerves in the part of the knee that is causing the pain.
Host: Ok, okay. Alright. And are they like tutorials that people can follow like a virtual workshop or something?
Bill: They’re individual videos that you would say, “My knee cap hurts”.
Host: Right.
Bill: And I would say, “Okay, I want you to do modulate the pain pattern interrupt section. Next time we talk, you’re going to tell me, did it leave the pain? Did the pain move? Did the pain change? Did it get worse? Did it go away for awhile and then come back? Did it go away for a little bit longer like the amount of time? What were you doing when the pain came back? And what we’re going to do is we’re going to pick apart what's going on in your knee, your leg, your body, your life that is creating the conditions causing the knee pain to come back.” And that's how I work with clients. I would say, Oh, I came back 10 minutes later, “Yeah, you’re dehydrated. You’re trying to rewire the neurological system and water conducts electricity. You don’t have enough water to transmit the signal throughout your body and offered it to stick”.
Host: Right, okay very interesting, very, very interesting. What other myths should our listeners and myself be aware of when it comes to knee pain?
Bill: The fourth one is testing the knee when you're unsure. So many people be like, “Oh well, I'm not sure if this is going to hurt the knee, but I’m going to try it anyways.” You could even tell by how they’re talking about it but it's like, it's not going to go well, You know what, we need to do something different. We need to be more strategic, so lay off of the tennis court. You know, give golf a couple of week rest and let strategically start creating comfort to give the body the time it needs to heal because just because we get the body out of pain doesn't mean the knee is healed. It just means the body’s out of pain. So giving it enough time to heal, to rest, to recover is going to be so much more beneficial in the long term.
Host: Well, wishful thinking dictates that, you know, I've been a subject of this. I've been subject to it as well. Wishful thinking dictates that you know what you lay off your knee or a layoff the physical activity for a while, oh the pain goes away, oh my knees all better. Everything is all good. And then yeah I will go play tennis or go skiing again or will go hiking again, in my case, or whatever the case may be, and we think like that. I definitely think like that.
Bill: Yeah and it’s…
Host: That's wrong.
Bill: It's not working. It lies in the myth number five which is continuing to do the same things over and over and expecting a different result.
Host: Right.
Bill: Because we may not only do this once, though. It's like we rest the knee.
Host: Yeah.
Bill: And then we’ll try it and the knee pain will come back and then we rest again and then we’ll try it again and then the knee pain comes back and at some point we got to go, “This isn’t working”. We go in to the doctor and get drug shots, surgery or painful physical therapy isn't given me a different result. We have to change the pattern. We have to look and zoom out and look at the bigger picture of what's going on and it’s really running or playing golf or whatever that is. Is it that important in the short term for the long-term health and longevity of your joints?
Host: What kind of information and knowledge do you make available to your clients generally online about different issues regarding the knee? What are the different areas that you've the disseminated information on?
Bill: Well, my website, of course. I have a newsletter I send out emails on a daily basis, giving different examples or scenarios and teaching points that I share in that newsletter. Also, I do YouTube videos per week, educating on different topics around the knee. And I also have on my Facebook page. I do a Facebook live every Tuesday at 10 AM.
Host: Would you mind telling us the address of the YouTube and the Facebook page?
Bill: It’s youtube.com/thekneepainguru
Host: Okay.
Bill: And facebook.com/TheKneePainGuru
Host: Simple enough, great!
Bill: Yeah, absolutely and I encourage people to get…There’s such an easier, comfortable way of doing it and that's not to say we don't push the body down the road. But in the initial stages, in the initial steps when we injury happens, do those initial pieces and then go to your doctor, get the diagnosis, know nothing is broken or torn and then reach out.
Host: Let's talk about another thing that's probably on a lot of listeners’ minds right now as we grow more experienced with age. Lot of different, you know, issues creep in our health and our wellness and our well-being. You know, ligament issues, tendon issues, our joints get stiff right, our knuckles, you know, our hands, arthritis, you know, also creeps in. A lot of people suffer from arthritis, especially in the knees, the knee area’s affected. Do you address that as well?
Bill: Yes. And, Wes, did you know all diagnoses of arthritis is dehydrated joint?
Host: No, I did not know that. Really?
Bill: This is great, you’re going to love this one.
Host: Okay.
Bill: So the knee has an injury or accident, trauma, surgery. The joint tenses up from the pain. That tension in the joint begins to squeeze out the synovial fluid, which begins a dehydrated joint.
Host: I'll pretend to understand what the synovial fluid is just for…(laughing)
Bill: Synovial fluid is the liquid that lubricates the joint.
Host: Oh, okay. Alright.
Bill: You may have heard of hyaluronic acid injections or…
Host: Yeah, I have.
Bill: Different injections in the knee. Those injections in the knee are designed to lubricate the joint.
Host: Right, okay.
Bill: But what's happening is the joint’s squeezing too hard to be able to hydrate itself because of the neurological pattern. The dysfunctional neurological pattern causes the joint to squeeze tighter, keeping the joint perpetually dehydrated. You can do this while we’re listening to the call can actually do this. You can squeeze your hand really tight like a fist. Squeeze it just for a few seconds and open your hand. You’ll see it be white and then turn pink.
Host: Yes, I see it.
Bill: This is what's going on in your knee joint.
Host: I see it, okay.
Bill: The joint in pain squeezes tight to protect itself from getting injured further, a normal, natural response to pain. And what ends up happening is it sets up a condition where the joint to dehydrate and wear. And you go to the doctor and diagnose it as arthritis.
Host: What can we do to prevent that?
Bill: Work with the intrinsic movements of the joint and create comfort and we create space in the joint. When you do drink water, the body can actually get the water into the joint where it needs to be lubricated.
Host: Brilliant. Excellent. This has been a most fruitful and eye-opening conversation. I've definitely learned a lot. Bill, before you go, is there any piece of advice that you had in mind for our listeners out there that you really want to get across?
Bill: There is always a way out of pain, always a way out of pain. If a body can get in the pain, it can get out of pain.
Host: Bill, thank you so much for your time. You have and I know we are recording this podcast between scheduled calls with your clients and you’re going to be moving on to helping more people around the world with your advice and your teaching, your coaching, and that people can get in touch with you very, very easily if they go to your website. thekneepainguru.com.
Bill: Yes, that is correct.
Host: Bill, thank you so much for being with us today.
Bill: Yeah, thank you, Wes.
