Physiotherapy for Pain Management

When you’re in pain, physical activity is usually one of the furthest things from your mind. However, physiotherapy can actually put you on the road to recovery quite quickly and can also help out when it comes to pain management. You may be tempted to lay in a warm bed with medication and an electric blanket when you’re suffering from aches and pains, but exercise may actually be the best thing for you at that point. This is because physiotherapy is known to be effective for just about all types of chronic neuropathic and musculoskeletal pains.

Types of Pain Managed

Physiotherapy is often used to alleviate the source of many types of common chronic pain including chronic headaches, Fibromyalgia, Osteoarthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, and Neuropathic pain, which results when nerves or tissues are injured. One goal of performing physiotherapy is to strengthen your body since it can become weakened if you haven’t been moving around. Physiotherapy can help manage pain as it teaches people to move functionally and safely after they haven’t moved in quite some time.

We accept OHIP for chronic pain illnesses

Physiotherapy Treatment Options for Chronic Pain

There are several different types of effective physiotherapy to help relieve and manage chronic pain. These include the manipulation of bones and joints, manual therapy using tools or hands on soft tissue, movement therapy and exercise, massage, cold laser therapy, and microcurrent stimulation. The cold laser therapy is designed to relieve pain and inflammation while releasing endorphins and microcurrent stimulation will emit alpha waves to the brain and relieve pain naturally by increasing dopamine and serotonin.

Physiotherapists can provide a variety of treatments in each of these therapy categories. For example, depending on your physical capabilities and the cause of pain, you may be able to exercise by swimming or walking on a treadmill. Each patient is unique and a therapist will make sure your physiotherapy treatments are personalized. The type of treatment will depend on the cause of your pain and what methods are the best for managing it. A therapist specializes in this type of treatment whereas many doctors don’t usually have the time to dig deeper into the problem and will simply treat it with medication.

How Physical Therapy can Help Relieve Chronic Pain

You can manage and control chronic pain by exercising for 30 minutes a day three to four times a week. The physical activity will help with your endurance level as well as stabilize your joints, strengthen the muscles and improve flexibility in your joints and muscles. A regular exercise routine will also enable you maintain the ability to function and move physically instead of allowing the chronic pain to disable you. Regular physical therapy and massage can help fight off soreness, stiffness, and inflammation. It also helps your body heal itself at it encourages the body  to produce natural pain-relieving chemicals.

The Right Combination for Pain Management

You’ll usually feel more pain the loss your body moves. However, your body will generally feel less pain when it engages in safe exercise and therapeutic activity. This will enable you to function normally when it comes to your daily routine. But even though physiotherapy may be very effective at dealing with chronic pain, you also need to combine it with things such as cold and heat therapy, nutritional supplements, and perhaps TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation). In addition to physiotherapy it’s recommended to visit a doctor for diagnosis to see of any type of medication is needed to help control your chronic pain.