Looking for Relief? Physical Therapy Can Help
There’s something oddly satisfying about waking up the morning after a hard workout and feeling a dull ache in your muscles.
But when that dull ache migrates to your joints and seems to happen every day, that satisfaction quickly turns to frustration.
The answer is not to take anti-inflammatory medication or simply ignore the aches and pains in your joints, but rather to talk to your physical therapist.
If these three reasons to consider physical therapy for joint pain aren’t enough to convince you, call our office to find out more.
1. Physical therapy can help you find relief the natural way!
It doesn’t matter whether it happens in your muscles or joints, your body’s pain receptors are there to alert you to a potential problem.
Whether it is a lack of fluid in the joint, damage to soft tissues like tendons or ligaments, or muscle strain or fatigue, pain signals are designed to keep you from doing permanent damage to your body. Yet, people have a tendency to treat pain as an inconvenience rather than a problem.
If pain is your first warning sign that there is a problem that needs to be fixed, suddenly getting to the root cause of that pain is a priority.
Fortunately, a physical therapist is a specialist in not only human anatomy, but how the body moves. They can uncover the cause of your pain during diagnostic testing and prescribe a series of therapies to address it.
2. Fear of the knife? Physical therapy can decrease the need for surgery.
Most people associate physical therapy with surgery. While it is a vital part of recovery after nearly every surgical procedure possible, that is not the only role physical therapy can play in healing.
In fact, with very few exceptions, physical therapy can help you resolve most joint pain without ever going under the knife.
In some cases, physical therapy has been proven more effective than surgery at treating certain types of joint pain. Joint pain relief without the anxiety and complications of surgery? Sign us up!
3. Physical therapy can help you move with ease.
There are times when rest is the appropriate course of action for treating acute joint pain, especially if there is an injury involved. However, targeted exercise, recommended by a physical therapist, can help relieve joint pain and stiffness.
Not only does exercise improve your overall health and fitness levels, but it also works to strengthen the muscles around your joints, providing them with more support.
Physical therapy can also help protect your bone density, give you more energy, help you sleep, and help you maintain a healthy weight. What does this have to do with joint pain?
A 2005 study found that losing just one pound can eliminate four pounds of pressure on your knees. Even modest weight loss, 5 to 10 pounds, can relieve as much as 20 to 40 pounds of pressure on your joints. A physical therapist can help you stay safely moving while you recover from aches and pains in your joints.
Find relief with our passive and active therapies!
Once your physical therapist has isolated the underlying cause of your chronic joint pain, we can prescribe techniques to help you start feeling – and moving – more like your old self.
Physical therapy for joint pain may start with passive exercises, in which we move the afflicted joint for you to increase its pain-free range of motion.
Exercises that reduce the amount of weight on the joints can also be extremely helpful. For instance, we may recommend swimming or water walking as a means of exercising the hips and knees without also forcing them to bear your full weight.
Other types of exercises can also help you overcome your joint pain while improving joint function. Strengthening exercises help by reinforcing the muscles and connective tissues that serve the joint. Corrective exercises and neuromuscular re-education can help you maintain a straighter, more symmetrical posture.
Last but not least, physical therapy offers a variety of helpful modalities beyond exercise. We may treat your joint pain with heat, ice, and manual therapies such as massage, just to name a few.
Ready to get started on the path toward relief?
Don’t let aches and pains in your joints keep you from living the life you want.
Call Zoan Physical Therapy today to schedule your consultation with our physical therapist and find out how physical therapy can help you live a pain-free life.