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 perform rehabilitative activities in a strict way, and their body will quickly reestablish normal patterns of movement and function without pain.

The non-athlete with an injury often has preexisting arthritis, and weak muscles, which makes recovery more difficult. Sometimes these things need some remediation and can slow recovery. And there are real limits to the efforts that non-athletes will make in order to get better. In fact, their usual objective is simply to resolve or improve their pain with the least effort necessary to do so.

Most people are not interested in investing much effort to optimize their health. In fact, we don’t even have consensus in what is health, and the best habits to attain and maintain it.

Physical therapy can help with Pain Management by providing the instruction in what to do for yourself by manipulating all the variables we know influence your injuries, pain and function. But a big part of therapy is imparting the reality that your active behavior is determinant and required to recover from injury.

Among the things that most people have heard about is core strength, at least with respect to low back pain, the most common complaint treated by physical therapists. Core strength is the strength of the muscles which encircle your abdomen. The reason these muscles are important is because the entire body is a structure of bones connected by ligaments. Think of ligaments as very tough rubber bands that hold the bones together. These ligaments are not very strong, however. And like rubber bands they can fail if you put too much stress on them.

They can fail if you stretch them too far, or for too long, or too many times without rest.

Even when ligaments don’t fail, they slowly wear out as you age. This depends on all the major and minor injuries you have over your lifetime.

Now imagine that you remove every part of your body except your bones and your ligaments. These structures would flop around, very loosely. The ligaments don’t provide much support or protection for your bones and the joints where the bones connect to each other.

So what protects your bones and joints and ligaments then? YOUR CORE STRENGTH. The muscles that make up your core. The reason is that your spine, including your low back, are made up of very small bones, with small joints, and small ligaments. These are all very vulnerable to injury. But your muscles also cross and connect your bones. And, while the ligaments are passive and weak, your muscles are active and strong. But you have to consciously use your muscles to protect your spine. If your muscles are relaxed and or weak, they don’t do much to protect your low back bones, joints and ligaments.

So how do you use your core? Physical Therapy in Decatur GA can teach you exercises to strengthen your core muscles. And we can teach you how to engage, or use, your core muscles

by breathing in, holding your breath, and tightening your core muscles whenever you do any activity that challenges your low back. Examples of such activities include getting in and out of bed or a car, leaning to put dishes in a dishwasher, and lifting weights.

The experts in core strength, and use, are powerlifters and weightlifters. These people develop great strength and know how to use it. They enhance it even more by wearing a restrictive belt, breathing in, and holding their breath during the lift. Doing so can enable them to lift hundreds of pounds without injury.

Some other athletes do this instinctively. Ever hear tennis players grunt when they hit the ball? That’s because they unconsciously hold their breath when they reach and hit the ball, then forcefully exhale upon hitting the ball. They do this repeatedly with each strike. And most don’t know, explicitly, what they are doing or why it is an effective safety measure when playing.

Done consciously, this would be a good behavior for golfers to adopt. If you’re looking for physical therapy in Decatur, Ga please call us at 404-558-4015. To learn more go