Traditional Chinese Medicine World Foundation

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Knee Injury

It's important to know that one fundamental principle in the philosophy of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) holds that everything that happens on the outside of the body in terms of damage or injury reflects an imbalance on the inside. In the case of knee difficulties, the knees represent the Kidney (they are associated with this organ, according to Five-Element theory). This symptom or sign on the outside of your body indicates that you have a Kidney function disorder and a Kidney energy deficiency. In other words, with a healthy Kidney you'd never get a knee problem. Don't just look at the physical level. There are no accidents. That part is vulnerable for a reason. Any part of the physical body always has a relationship with the internal body. For instance, a person with a healthy body might fall, but he or she would never get an injury. Actually, according to this way of thinking, a person with a truly healthy, balanced body would never fall. If you fall, that means there is some imbalance. Once again, there are no accidents! From this perspective, everything has a reason. And particularly with injuries, there is always some relation to an internal imbalance. If you often get a knee injury or have a knee weakness, this is sign that you have a Kidney energy deficiency.

Generally speaking, in the TCM framework, sports injuries fall into two categories. In one, the tendon is injured—the tendon and muscle are usually overstretched and hurt. This kind of injury will cause motion problems: the body has limited motion and the person will experience pain. The other category of injury involves injury to the bone, such as a broken bone. If the injury does not involve injury to the bone, acupuncture and acupressure or Tuina (Chinese acupressure, pronounced twee naah) can help. With knee injuries, in general, sometimes just one or two good treatments can bring about an immediate change, and without surgery.

Any kind of injury, from the perspective of TCM, involves blood stagnation. In order to help the blood flow you need to increase the flow of energy (called "Qi" in Chinese, and pronounced chee), so acupuncture and herbs are used for treatment. Most important, don't use ice! In the martial arts, most of the time ice is not used; heat is used on sports injuries. Ice will keep everything in the area frozen, making the circulation worse. The use of ice can cause arthritis later on. In the short term, using ice may be better than heat because you will feel immediate relief from the pain, but good treatment—good acupuncture, good acupressure—is much more effective than ice because it treats the root cause of the problem.

If you have a sports injury, you should seek an acupuncturist and herbalist in your area to help you strengthen your Kidney function. Try this approach first. Often, if the treatment is right, it can help you to avoid surgery. Many times it looks like it's the ligament, but it's really a muscle and tendon problem. So if you help the muscle and the tendon release the blood stagnation, it can help the entire area to heal. The fundamental TCM concept is that as long as energy can flow, there is no pain and no injury.

TCM Tips for Healing