Pain Conditions
Are you suffering from pain? Empower Physical Therapy offers services and treatment for a number of painful conditions and/or chronic pain. In fact, physical therapy has been shown to be an effective and conservative form of treatment for managing pain conditions. Treatment may include both manual therapy and strengthening exercises to correct underlying issues and provide lasting relief from pain over time.
Pain Relief and Physical Therapy
Pain that stems directly from an injury, surgery, or disease, and chronic pain can be treated through manual therapy and other techniques employed by doctors of physical therapy. Pain can severely affect a person’s quality of life. Pain impairs function, restricts range of motion, and keeps a person from working or enjoying the activities that give them joy, peace, and happiness.
Physical therapy can relieve the symptoms associated with acute and chronic pain as well as restore function. Our trained certified physical therapists work with our patients to evaluate their unique condition and to devise a treatment plan that can reduce or completely eliminate pain.
Acute and Chronic Pain
Acute pain – pain that lasts for a short time following an injury or surgery – can be treated by physical therapy, thereby restoring strength, range of motion, and agility. This occurs through a variety of manual therapies and other techniques and exercises performed at appointments, as well as outside of a clinical setting by the patient on their own at home. The same is also true for chronic pain.
Chronic pain, however, differs from acute pain. While a person is healing from injury, illness, or surgery, pain signals travel from the site of the injury and other affected tissues through the body’s central nervous system, and eventually to the brain. For most people, this pain ends when the affected tissues are healed. Chronic pain is different, though. In some cases of chronic pain, the body continues to send pain signals to the brain. In other cases, the brain interprets other signals from the body as pain.
Treating Acute and Chronic Pain With Physical Therapy
Regardless of the type of acute or chronic pain a person is experiencing, a doctor of physical therapy can evaluate, treat, and help to manage pain as part of a regular course of treatment. Pain medications may help with acute and chronic pain on a short-term basis, but they can also have serious, associated side effects that make them less than ideal for treating pain on a long-term basis.
Physical therapy, on the other hand, treats and manages pain by addressing underlying conditions, restoring and increasing the body’s function, strength, and range of motion. Therapies that address pain may include:
- Deep tissue massage and other manual therapies that relieve pain and tension in the body’s muscles and connective tissues through direct pressure.
- Hot and cold treatments that draw oxygen and blood to the affected areas, relieving pain and inflammation.
- Function and activity training that provides patients with alternative ways of performing tasks and engaging in activities in a controlled manner that lessens their pain and the potential for re-injury.