How Physical Therapy Can Help Relieve Chronic Pain

It is not uncommon to endure aches and pains from time to time due to an injury, underlying health condition, or general wear and tear. This pain can subside as your body heals, but your brain can sometimes keep on receiving pain signals even after you have recovered from a situation. This is when the pain becomes chronic, particularly if it lasts for three months or longer.

Several treatment options can be used to give you relief, depending on the nature of your pain. A New Brunswick physical therapy specialist can help you get relief from chronic pain through several techniques after an accurate diagnosis.

Exercise

Your provider can come up with an exercise program to help you get relief based on the diagnosis findings. In most cases, physical therapy for chronic pain will involve aerobic, stretching, and strengthening exercises. If you are experiencing chronic lower back pain, for instance, you can benefit significantly from core strengthening exercises. Besides, depending on your pain location, aerobic exercises such as bike riding can positively impact reducing the pain. Supervised stretching exercises can also contribute significantly to reducing your pain.

Manual Therapy

In some chronic pain cases, your provider can move and manipulate your body in such a way that you experience a substantial reduction in your pain. However, such a healing touch requires an experienced and highly trained therapist to yield the best results in your pain management.

Manual therapy can include soft tissue mobilization, a targeted physical therapy technique similar to massage, and joint manipulation. Other strategies, such as dry needling therapy, can also address some specific causes of chronic pain.

Patient Education

This is one of the techniques that is very helpful when it comes to managing chronic pain. This is because learning and talking about pain is a way of helping to relieve it. If you can understand where the pain is coming from and what would be causing it, it will help you turn to the right treatment other than the usual tendency of turning to mediations automatically.

Physical therapists are in a better position to help you understand your chronic pain. They have a deep and comprehensive understanding of your body and how it functions and can communicate well with you while experiencing the pain.

When your chronic pain is associated with trauma, depression, or anxiety, your provider can also recommend counseling besides physical therapy.

A Combined Effort

Physical therapy is more of a combined effort between you and your physical therapist. If a sense of partnership exists, the chronic pain management technique will bear more success. This means that you have to add your provider to your team to help you achieve your health goals. You also have to work hard other than merely taking pills to have results that are far beyond simple pain management.

Physical Therapy Duration

It is recommended that for the physical therapy to be effective, it should last between 2-6 months depending on the condition. However, it can take longer and also become a part of your life entirely.

If you are suffering from chronic pain, your provider at Pain and Anesthesia Care can help you tell if physical therapy is the most suitable treatment option for you. When deemed appropriate for you, physical therapy can significantly help you manage your chronic pain.