Physical therapy is instrumental in beating pain, mobility limitations, restoring strength and regaining quality of life. The role of physical therapy is relatively well-known in recovery from injuries and surgeries. But physical therapy has significantly more to offer in terms of improving muscle mechanics, improving efficiency in movement patterns, and enhancing performance. Physical therapy is critical in recovery from injuries but can also transform your life for the better.
Physical therapy plays several roles in improving your mobility, recovering from pain and preventing future injuries, improve awareness of the body and body mechanics, improve performance and efficiency, learning to manage and thrive with permanent disabilities, resuming work after work-related injuries, bouncing back from vehicle accidents, learning to use adaptive equipment, managing changes in the body during pregnancy, preparing for childbirth and postpartum recovery.
How Physical Therapy Can Transform Your Life
Abolish Pain
The role of physical therapy in alleviating pain is extremely well known but its value is beyond treating musculoskeletal pain and injuries. Physical Therapy treatments can help address neurological pain syndromes like diabetic neuropathy, complex regional pain syndromes, and autoimmune diseases. Neuropathic pain occurs when there is damage or injury to the nervous system. Several clinical research documents the role of physical therapy in the successful reduction of neuropathic pain with complimentary treatments. The non-invasive approach of physical therapy and individualized exercise prescription can be successful in reducing pain and improving the quality of life.
Improving performance
Physical Therapy is instrumental in improving performance. Physical therapists are movement experts and are able to identify muscle function, critical movement characteristics, and the relationship between muscle mechanics and movement. They can identify key points of loss of muscle activity and load-bearing tolerance. With targeted interventions they can provide treatments to enhance existing movement and function, in turn, improving performance.
Injury Prevention
Physical therapy helps you rebound from injuries with strengthening but the role goes beyond injuries. Lack of strength is a precursor for many injuries. Physical therapy can play an important role in identifying these weaknesses, even before an injury occurs. With targeted treatments, your physical therapist will strengthen weak areas, and improve muscle mechanics and function resulting in injury prevention.
Education and Self Realization
Physical Therapy plays a critical role in teaching you body awareness for your own body. Physical therapists are movement experts trained to identify chains of muscle activation and movement patterns. With those tools, your physical therapist can teach you to identify how different areas of your body align and move in relation to each other, how to recognize extreme ranges of movements, how to achieve neutral alignment and most importantly how to self correct your movements for the most efficient and safe activity performance.
Managing permanent Disabilities
Physical Therapy plays a critical role not only in rehabilitation but also habilitation. It helps those who are dealing with disabilities to gain, maintain and improve skills to manage their disability. Physical therapy plays a key role in developing new motor skills, necessary, after devastating interventions like amputations, stroke, etc…where there is significant loss in body function and capacity. Targeted physical therapy interventions encourage the brain to develop new neural pathways into groups of muscles for new skill development necessary to manage disabilities. This is creating fundamental changes on how the brain communicates with the muscles.
Returning to work after work related injuries
Physical Therapy is imperative in successful return to work after an injury interrupts your wage earning capacity. Tailored assessments are provided to determine loss of working capacity specific to your job requirements. Your physical therapist will then craft an individualized treatment plan to help you return to your job related tasks, regaining your wage earning capacity.
Aiding pregnancy, preparing for childbirth and postpartum recovery
It is well known that a woman’s body undergoes dramatic changes during pregnancy. Physical therapy can play a transformative role during pregnancy, strengthening muscles, improving endurance and teaching positions and techniques to prepare for delivery, improving your childbirth experience.
Post Delivery, physical therapy can play a critical role to restore your abdominal and pelvic floor strength and teach you body mechanics and safety techniques as you care for your baby. Specialized physical therapy centers can also help improve lactation.
Physical therapy is an effective and non-invasive tool that plays a transformative role in your life. An expert physical therapist will listen to you, identify your goals, recognize the limitations and craft a plan as your partner to regain your quality of life.
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