Meniscus Pain - getting that spring back in your step.

Meniscus pain can be a showstopper, as with most kinds of knee pain. The meniscus is a piece of cartilage that acts as a cushion between the shin and thigh bones, each knee has two menisci.

In two separate instances, I’ve seen meniscus pain relieved by releasing the origin of the pain which resided deep in the sternum of the chest. Both times, the pain resolved quickly with skilled treatment. If you have meniscus pain that comes with a history of a fall with an abrupt stop to your chest, read on. 

Given the location of meniscus pain, it’s interesting that it was the esophagus that was affected by the falls, with the resulting facial pull tracked down to the meniscus. Organs can get stressed and tight from falls, and the esophagus, at least, can get displaced as well . In both cases, the falls ended with an abrupt, sudden stop to the ground with the meniscus pain surfacing three weeks post-event and the other, three decades.

The first instance is my own. In 2020 was skiing in white out conditions on Mt. Hood in Oregon. At the top of the western most lift where the wind was the strongest, the snow surface was mixed; hard packed at intervals with two-foot drifts. The only way to navigate was to stay on your feet on the hard pack, walk through the drift and repeat. As the flat transitioned downwards, I thought I’d negotiated the last of the drifts, since they had been spacing out nicely. There was no visibility when, SLAM, I hit a drift at a good clip. My chest abruptly impacted with the wind-scoured hard pack, stopping me in my tracks. I checked whether I was OK and could move all my body parts, I could, so I got up and started downwards again. The rest of the day was brilliant. The thought did float in the back of my mind, however, “something will show up at some point in my body as a result of this…” I don’t go looking for trouble, however, it was just a matter of time before some mysterious ache showed up. You can’t be slammed down with the force of a fly swatter going for a fly and not have some consequence. I know the body all too well, I work with it daily, mine and others for a minimum of seven hours a day.

Sure enough, “it” showed up three weeks later; a sharp ache in my right knee. It started out an infrequent twinge before it became more often. I stretched my hips, and my legs more, I sat in our hot tub, and finally I called one of the manual therapists I trust. She identified that my esophagus, deep to my sternum, had shifted considerably to the left. Presumably this happened high on the slopes of Mt. Hood. Under her care I immediately felt the knee pain ease as she treated me in that session, including working directly on the meniscus. I had two sessions and then did a lot of stretching of my knees, legs, hip flexors, deep hip rotators and trunk. It took another three weeks for the last remnants of that issue to resolve.

The second instance occurred when a client came in with a similar presentation, pain at the meniscus, I could feel the connection between the two locations. The esophagus had restrictions in multiple places. I learned that as an elementary-aged child, this client had been thrown to the ground and chipped a tooth (another abrupt stop). It took three decades for that restriction to manifest as meniscus pain. Two skilled knee surgeons had assessed the second knee, finding no anomaly at the meniscus. The integrity of the knee was still intact, the pain was clearly originating elsewhere.

Here's the connection, the esophagus relates to many surrounding structures. A misplaced esophagus can put a pull on the fascia in the abdomen and keep pulling until the fascial line arrives at the meniscus. As a result, the meniscus is slowly pulled out of the knee joint from the tension higher up in the chest. 

There must be others managing similar pain. If the source is fascial, it’s often treatable. Consider visiting the Chikly Institute to find someone close to you or look for someone who practices Visceral Manipulation.

We all have falls and so much of the pain that shows up in the body has its’ origin in those falls, even from ones that happened years ago. It’s never too late to find the source and relieve how it manifests so you can get once again be the bee’s knees

Pete Connolly