How Does Physical Therapy Help in Pain Management?
In this context, I’m using pain management, generically, to mean improvement in your pain levels with physical therapy treatments. I do not mean the pain management treatment that uses injections like epidural steroid injections or facet joint injections, which we also call pain management in a more formal, conventional way. Physical therapy uses a variety of physical medicine treatments including exercises, stretching, passive modalities, manual therapies, and education. When your body is injured the injury involves several tissues and systems of the body in complex ways. The best way to treat these injuries to combine a variety of physical, sensory and motor inputs to normalize and rehabilitate your function. Doing so, reestablishes your body’s systems to work and perceive normally again. At least that is the way it works theoretically. Let’s consider two types of injured people. The athlete without preexisting problems and degeneration, who is fit, can be encouraged and coached to...