3 Great Ways Physiotherapy Can Help Improve Your Health
In this article, we briefly discuss how physiotherapy helps improve your health and overall well being.This question may be an important one if you are considering whether to enter the physiotherapy profession. Of course, it may also be relevant if you are experiencing persistent pain and discomfort from an injury or medical condition and wondering how physiotherapy can help.
If you are considering a course of physiotherapy treatment, it is our hope that this article will help you in that decision.
Below, we will cover the physiological benefits of physiotherapy. If you are also interested in how physiotherapy helps from a mental health perspective, please review this article.
Physiotherapy Can Reduce The Risk Of Injury By Improving Your Body Mechanics
Physical therapists are trained in body mechanics. This means that they understand the systems that are present in our bodies to deal with injuries and the stresses that can cause these injuries. For example, they understand the normal ranges of motion of the principal joints in the body and how the muscles that surround each joint help it to achieve that range.
This understanding can help physiotherapists analyze your daily movement patterns and how compatible these are with the lengths and strengths of your muscles. They can then use this information to prescribe a home exercise program that can improve mobility, muscle strength and joint range of motion. The education and advice from a physiotherapist can help you to deal more easily with the daily demands of physical activity and with less risk of injury.
The featured image above shows a physiotherapist working with an elderly patient who has a shoulder injury. This type of situation is a prime example of how physiotherapy helps us to better understand how wear and tear injuries can occur and the exercises that can be followed to recover from them and help prevent recurrence.
Pain Relief
Many of us, particularly if we are middle aged or older, have to deal with regular muscle and joint pain.
The pain may be from a wide range of health conditions. For example, it may be from a soft tissue injury suffered during physical or sports activity.
Alternatively, it may be one of the range of conditions that can result from the wear and tear of modern life. A prime example of the former is an ACL tear of the knee while one of the most prevalent wear and tear conditions of modern times is osteoarthritis.
Fortunately, this is an important part of how physiotherapy helps improve quality of life. Physical therapists are trained to manage pain using a wide variety of techniques. These include transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, acupuncture and many other techniques.
Many of these approaches offer the advantages (compared to prescription pain relief) of:
- No risk of addiction;
- Being nonsurgical, and therefore carrying less risk of complications;
- Not interfering with other pain relief techniques we may be undergoing simultaneously.
One important result of the benefits of physical therapy in helping to reduce pain is improving quality of life. Many of the conditions for which it can help manage pain are among the most debilitating in modern life (e.g. arthritis). By reducing the daily amount of pain and discomfort faced by its victims, physiotherapy can markedly improve a patient’s ability to continue enjoying the activities they love.
Stress Relief
A key result of the above contributions of physical therapy to improved health is stress reduction. If we are able to spend more time exercising, gardening or engaging in our favourite pastimes, we are happier and less stressed.
Moreover, just being able to get out of bed in the morning with less pain from an osteoarthritic knee or other health condition can contribute to less stress.
Stress itself has been linked to a wide range of health problems such as weight gain, heart disease and high blood pressure, As a result, by allowing you to enjoy more physical exercise and experience less pain generally, physical therapy can contribute to improved health across a wide variety of areas.
In Conclusion: How Physiotherapy helps Improve Your Health
In this article, we have presented three important answers to the question of how physiotherapy can help improve your health. It relieves pain, improves mobility and reduces stress. By improving your health, it can boost your overall quality of life and allow you to spend more time enjoying your favourite activities.
If you are contemplating physical therapy to treat a nagging injury or other physical issue, we hope that the above information will be helpful. As always, we would counsel you to discuss this decision with your doctor before proceeding.
