1. Introduction
If climbing stairs has started to feel like a small negotiation with your knee, or you've begun avoiding longer walks because of a dull, persistent ache, you're far from alone. Chronic knee pain is one of the most common reasons people in the UK seek medical advice, and it can develop gradually — from wear and tear, an old injury that never fully resolved, or simply the accumulated strain of daily movement over years.
This guide is written for anyone in London currently searching for answers about chronic knee pain — whether you've just started noticing discomfort, you've been told you have early osteoarthritis, or you've already tried painkillers and physiotherapy without lasting relief. We'll walk through what causes chronic knee pain, what the NHS and conventional medicine typically offer, where those approaches can fall short, and how a Vietnamese Traditional Medicine perspective — the clinical approach used at Khí Tâm Health Hub in Battersea — views and addresses this condition differently.
This is an educational resource, not a sales pitch. Our goal is to help you understand your options so you can make an informed decision about your knee health.
2. What is Chronic Knee Pain?
Chronic knee pain refers to persistent discomfort in or around the knee joint lasting longer than a few months, distinct from acute pain following a fresh injury. It can stem from several underlying causes, the most common in adults being osteoarthritis — the gradual wearing down of the cartilage that cushions the knee joint.
Knee pain and osteoarthritis represent a significant and growing health burden in the UK. According to Versus Arthritis, musculoskeletal conditions including osteoarthritis affect millions of people across the country, with the knee being one of the most commonly affected joints, and prevalence rising with age and increasingly linked to lifestyle factors such as body weight and activity levels ( Versus Arthritis, State of Musculoskeletal Health 2025). The NHS notes that while knee replacement surgery is available for severe cases, a range of non-surgical treatments are typically tried first, reflecting how common and manageable chronic knee pain can be at earlier stages ( NHS).
Beyond osteoarthritis, chronic knee pain can also result from old ligament or meniscus injuries that healed imperfectly, patellofemoral pain syndrome (pain around the kneecap, o en linked to muscle imbalance or tracking issues), tendinitis from repetitive strain, and biomechanical factors such as hip weakness or poor ankle mobility that redirect abnormal load onto the knee over time.
This last category is particularly important and o en overlooked: the knee is a "middle joint," sitting between the hip and the ankle in the kinetic chain. Because of this position, a significant proportion of chronic knee pain cases actually originate — at least in part — from dysfunction elsewhere in the leg, rather than a problem intrinsic to the knee itself. This is why two people with identical knee X-rays can have very different pain experiences and very different responses to the same knee-focused treatment: their broader leg mechanics may be entirely different.
Risk factors for chronic knee pain include age, excess body weight (which significantly increases joint loading), previous injury, repetitive high-impact activity, and genetic predisposition to conditions like osteoarthritis.
3. Conventional Treatments and Their Limits
NHS and conventional private care for chronic knee pain generally follows a stepped, non surgical-first approach before surgery is considered:
Weight management and lifestyle changes. The NHS specifically recommends weight loss where relevant, since even modest weight reduction can meaningfully reduce strain on the knee joint ( NHS). This is genuinely effective for many patients but addresses joint loading generally rather than any specific biomechanical imbalance.
Low-impact exercise and physiotherapy. Swimming, walking, and cycling, along with physiotherapist-guided muscle strengthening, are commonly recommended first-line approaches. Strengthening the muscles supporting the knee can meaningfully improve function, though generic exercise programmes don't always identify or correct the specific biomechanical imbalance (hip, ankle, or fascia-related) driving an individual's pain.
Pain relief medication. Over-the-counter or prescribed pain relief, gels, and creams can help manage symptoms day to day but do not address the structural or mechanical cause of the pain.
Steroid injections. Hydrocortisone injections into the joint can help with pain and swelling, particularly during flare-ups, but effects are o en temporary and don't resolve the underlying biomechanical drivers.
Non-replacement surgery. For appropriate candidates, procedures like arthroscopy, osteotomy, or microfracture surgery may be considered before a full knee replacement, though these remain invasive interventions with their own recovery periods ( NHS).
Knee replacement. Reserved for more severe cases where conservative treatment has been exhausted.
The common limitation across these conventional options is that most focus on the knee joint itself — its cartilage, its inflammation, its structural integrity — while paying less systematic attention to how the hip, ankle, and surrounding fascia might be contributing to abnormal loading in the first place. A physiotherapy programme focused purely on quadriceps strengthening, for instance, may miss a hip stability issue that's the true driver of a patient's knee pain. This is exactly the gap that a broader, whole-body clinical assessment — such as the one used in Vietnamese Traditional Medicine — is designed to address.
4. Vietnamese Traditional Medicine Perspective
Vietnamese Traditional Medicine (VTM) is a distinct clinical tradition with its own history, diagnostic philosophy, and treatment methods — separate from, though historically related to, Chinese Traditional Medicine (o en searched online as "TCM"). It's worth being clear about this distinction from the outset: Master Sridevi Tố Hải practises and teaches Vietnamese Traditional Medicine specifically, not Chinese Traditional Medicine, and her clinical training reflects Vietnam's own medical institutions and centuries of regional clinical practice.
At the heart of the VTM perspective is the principle that the body should be assessed as an interconnected whole, not a set of isolated joints. This is especially relevant for knee pain, given the knee's position as a "middle joint" between the hip and ankle. A purely mechanical, X ray-focused view of the knee can tell you how much cartilage has worn away, but it cannot tell you why the loading pattern became abnormal in the first place — and that "why" is o en where lasting improvement is found.
Master Sridevi Tố Hải, Doctor of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine, CHP UK Accredited, brings more than 20 years of clinical experience to this framework — the Khí Tâm Method — developed to bridge traditional Vietnamese diagnostic principles with a structured, repeatable clinical process for chronic pain conditions, chronic knee pain being one of her specific areas of focus in her Battersea clinic.
From a VTM perspective, a knee assessment never starts and ends at the joint. Master Sridevi evaluates how tension and weakness patterns travel through the fascia lines connecting the hip, thigh, knee, and lower leg — frequently finding that hip instability or restricted ankle mobility is quietly redirecting excess strain onto the knee, sometimes for years before pain became noticeable. She also considers the nervous system's role: chronic pain o en triggers a protective guarding response in the surrounding muscles, which can further limit confident movement and create secondary compensation patterns, independent of how much structural damage is actually present in the joint.
This doesn't mean VTM rejects the value of conventional medicine or imaging — quite the opposite. Master Sridevi's clinical model is designed to work alongside GP care, physiotherapy, orthopaedic assessment, and, where appropriate, surgical pathways. The VTM lens simply adds a structural and energetic dimension that many conventional pathways don't have the scope or time to fully explore: identifying and working with the contributing patterns across the entire leg and hip-ankle chain, not only the site of pain.
For patients who have followed standard physiotherapy or received injections without lasting improvement, this whole-body, root-cause perspective is o en the missing piece — not a replacement for medical care, but a complementary clinical approach grounded in a genuinely different diagnostic tradition.
5. The Khí Tâm Method Applied to Knee Pain
The Khí Tâm Method is Master Sridevi's proprietary framework, structured around five interconnected body layers that are assessed and treated in sequence: skin, muscle, fascia, joint/bone, and energy pathway. Applying this specifically to chronic knee pain illustrates why the approach differs from single-modality, knee-only treatment.
Layer 1: Skin. The assessment begins at the surface — checking temperature, texture, and sensitivity around the knee and along the thigh and calf. Changes here can indicate areas of inflammation or altered circulation that inform where deeper work should begin.
Layer 2: Muscle. Master Sridevi assesses the muscle groups affecting knee function — quadriceps, hamstrings, calves, and crucially, hip stabiliser muscles (glutes) — for weakness, tightness, or compensation patterns. It's extremely common to find hip weakness contributing to knee strain that a knee-focused exercise sheet alone would never identify.
Layer 3: Fascia. This is o en the most overlooked layer in conventional knee treatment. Fascia is the connective tissue web running throughout the leg, and tension along the IT band or thigh fascia can pull the kneecap slightly off its ideal tracking path, generating pain that presents at the knee even though the mechanical problem originates further up or down the chain. Manual fascia release techniques aim to restore glide and reduce this pulling tension.
Layer 4: Joint/bone. Only once the superficial and connective tissue layers have been addressed does treatment move to gentle, targeted work around the knee joint itself — supporting comfortable mobility and reducing localised strain, always working within the joint's current tolerance.
Layer 5: Energy pathway. The final layer addresses the nervous system and energetic balance — using traditional Vietnamese energy-balance techniques to help calm the protective guarding response that o en develops around a chronically painful joint, supporting greater confidence in movement and weight-bearing over subsequent sessions.
This five-layer sequence is not applied identically to every patient. A runner with ankle mobility restrictions will receive a different balance of fascia and joint work than an older patient with osteoarthritis and hip weakness. This is why the initial 60-minute assessment session is so important — it allows Master Sridevi to map exactly which layers and which parts of the hip-knee-ankle chain are most contributing to a given patient's presentation before building a personalised, sequential treatment plan.
Sessions are typically recommended in a structured course rather than as one-off visits, reflecting the reality that chronic knee pain — whether managed conventionally or through VTM — responds best to consistent, progressive treatment over weeks rather than a single intervention, particularly when multiple contributing factors across the leg need to be addressed.
6. What Research Says
While knee pain research specific to Vietnamese Traditional Medicine is limited, there is a substantial body of evidence on acupuncture and manual therapy approaches for knee osteoarthritis (methods with some conceptual overlap to traditional East Asian medicine broadly) that provides useful context:
A 2023 clinical practice guideline published in the Journal of Evidence-Based Medicine, based on a systematic review and meta-analysis of 9,422 knee osteoarthritis patients, concluded that acupuncture should be suggested over no treatment for adult knee osteoarthritis, with moderate-certainty evidence showing improvement in the WOMAC total score (a widely used measure of osteoarthritis pain, stiffness, and function) ( PubMed, 2023).
A 2025 narrative review in the Journal of Pain Research examining acupuncture for knee osteoarthritis found consistent evidence of benefit for pain reduction and functional improvement across multiple studies, while noting that treatment effects and mechanisms are still being clarified through ongoing research ( Journal of Pain Research, 2025)
NHS guidance itself recognises that non-surgical, conservative approaches — including manual and movement-based therapy — are appropriate first-line options for knee pain before surgical intervention is considered, reflecting the broader clinical consensus that structural, hands-on approaches have a meaningful role in knee pain management ( NHS).
It's important to note that most existing research evaluates acupuncture and manual therapy generally, not Vietnamese Traditional Medicine or the Khí Tâm Method specifically. We share this research as useful context on manual and traditional therapy approaches broadly, not as a direct clinical claim about outcomes at Khí Tâm Health Hub.
7. Self-Care You Can Start Today
While professional assessment is valuable for chronic knee pain, there are gentle steps you can begin at home to support your knee function between sessions:
1. Straight leg raises. Lying down, tighten your thigh muscle and slowly li your leg a few inches with the knee straight, hold briefly, then lower. This strengthens the quadriceps without placing direct load through the knee joint.
2. Glute bridges. Lying on your back with knees bent, gently li your hips off the floor by engaging your glutes. Since hip weakness is a common hidden contributor to knee strain, this simple exercise can help address a root cause many people never target.
3. Calf raises. Standing near a support, rise onto your toes and slowly lower. This supports ankle strength and mobility, which plays a meaningful role in how load travels up to the knee.
4. Gentle stationary cycling. Low-resistance cycling is a widely recommended low-impact way to maintain knee mobility and circulation without high-impact strain.
5. Ice or heat as needed. Ice can help manage acute flare-up inflammation, while gentle heat before movement can help ease general stiffness — use whichever your body responds to better.
These gentle exercises are not a substitute for individualised clinical assessment, particularly if you have significant swelling, instability, or a suspected structural injury. If any exercise significantly increases your pain, stop and seek professional guidance.
8. When to Seek Professional Help
Consider seeking a professional structural assessment if: your knee pain has persisted beyond several weeks without improvement; you're noticing your knee giving way, locking, or feeling unstable; pain is limiting everyday activities like stairs or walking distances you previously managed easily; you've completed a course of physiotherapy or received an injection without lasting benefit; or you're aware of compensation patterns developing (limping, favouring one leg) that may be creating problems elsewhere.
Chronic knee pain that is le unmanaged can, for many patients, gradually worsen as compensation patterns place additional strain on the hip, ankle, or opposite leg. A structured, whole-body assessment — like the one offered through the Khí Tâm Method at Khí Tâm Health Hub in Battersea — can help identify contributing factors beyond the joint itself and support a more complete, non-surgical recovery pathway where appropriate.
If you'd like a doctor-led assessment of your knee pain from Master Sridevi Tố Hải, Doctor of Vietnamese Traditional Medicine, you can learn more about the treatment approach and book a session on our Knee Pain Specialist Battersea page.