You have back pain that won’t go away and have been told that physical therapy can be a huge help. Want to know how? Here are three ways.
Treatments
First, it uses certain treatments, like ice and heat, TENS and ultrasound to help repair any damage to the spine and surrounding tissue. Heat and ice help by reducing pain. The muscles surrounding your spine may be injured or overused and ice will dull the pain by cooling inflammation and nerves. Heat then relaxes those muscles and promotes blood flow to promote healing.
A transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulator (TENS) unit uses electrical stimulation to override the pain signals that are sent to the brain. Ultrasound is a form of deep heating in which sound waves are applied to the skin and penetrate into the soft tissues which promotes healing.
Exercise
Next, use of exercise will do a few things to help as well. Exercise, done correctly, strengthens the muscles that surround the spine. This is important because those muscles help keep the sheer weight of your body from breaking your back.
The spine on its own can only support about 35 pounds of pressure. Since people above the age of two weigh more than 35 pounds, keeping the muscles that support your spine strong are important for its health. If they aren’t, you get stress on the spine which causes injury and pain. Exercise also promotes healing by encouraging blood flow to the muscles being used.
Physical therapy
A physical therapist also understands the mechanics of the body and can explain how doing exercises properly will help you, and how doing them improperly can hurt you. Then you’ll be better able to continue to incorporate exercise into your everyday life.
Physical therapy can get you back on the wellness track and give you the tools to stay there.
