Chronic pain can take over your life if you don’t take proactive measures to overcome it. Instead of enjoying life to the fullest, daily pain can become the central focus of your life. You start skipping out on social activities, playing with children or grandchildren, or other activities that used to be routine. Instead, the pain has become the first and last thing on your mind every day. It that sounds like you, it’s time to contact a physical therapist in our office and schedule an appointment.
Diagnosing Daily Pain
Chronic pain is an intense pain that someone experiences every day, for a period of more than three months. The first step to battling pain every day is to diagnose the source. Your first appointment with a physical therapist will involve identifying the cause of your pain. This could be a simple process, such as, “I had a car accident and I’ve felt pain in X ever since then.” In many cases, chronic pain can be more elusive. Your physical therapist will conduct a thorough exam to test where you experience pain, how it impacts your posture and range of motion, how your body weight could be exacerbating pain, and a number of other tests.
Your Custom Physical Therapy Plan for Pain
Once the physical therapist knows where you’re experiencing pain, when you feel the pain and the likely cause of the pain, the real work can begin. Based on the diagnosis, your age, weight, diet and overall physical condition, a personalized physical therapy plan will be created for you. Every individual is unique and we believe that your physical therapy plan should be unique to you. This is accomplished by working with your physical therapist and being honest in the diagnosis phase, so that the best possible plan of attack can be developed for your situation.
How Physical Therapy Helps with Daily Pain
Here are the main areas that your personalized physical therapy plan will be used to help you finally find relief from those daily aches and pains:
- Exercise: A regular exercise plan will be developed to help you maintain or grow your physical strength, lose weight if necessary, and improve your overall health. Exercise has been clinically proven to be a great strategy for reducing aches and pains. Your physical therapist will recommend specific exercises for your age, gender and body type, and will teach you how to properly do the exercises to attain your goals.
- Manual Therapy: Another term for manual therapy is “therapeutic massage.” Physical therapists are specifically trained in soft tissue manipulation techniques that will ease tension, release built-up toxins in the body and relieve pain. Manual therapy is used to manage pain for conditions that range from carpal tunnel syndrome to low back pain. Manual therapy techniques have also been clinically proven to reduce pain and increase your range of motion in your limbs and torso.
- Education: Your physical therapist will teach you different methods to reduce pain, which you may not have realized were available. This can include posture while sitting and standing, to methods of getting a more comfortable night’s sleep. Once you are aware of the different ways that posture and movement can impact pain, you will be able to adjust your everyday life in ways that maximize the benefits of physical therapy.
You should also know that you won’t be taking this journey alone. Your physical therapist will be with you every step of the way to provide motivation and coaching to overcome your pain. Contact Progressive Sports Medicine if you’re ready to take back control of your life and kick the pain for good through physical therapy.
Tags: physical therapy
