Physiotherapy is the treatment of disease, injury, or some other ailment through physical methods. It utilises elements such as massage therapy, exercise, and other movements to help the body work through pain. When used appropriately, physiotherapy can help improve a number of conditions, injuries, and illnesses.
1. Managing Your Pain
As a process, physiotherapy can help you manage your pain. TENS, or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation, sends signals to your brain to alter the path of pain. Depending on how low you set your TENS machine, it can feel similar to a soothing massage. It also helps to relax your muscles, lowering the pain of muscle spasms. By managing your pain with a physiotherapist, it reduces the need for surgery and potentially dangerous, addictive pain medications such as opioids.
2. Improve Your Fitness Levels
Physiotherapy also improves your overall fitness. Oftentimes, patients are required to stretch and perform other physical exercises to improve mobility. While these are helping patients to build muscle and regain strength, they’re also burning calories and getting them in shape. A person’s blood circulation is also likely to improve, making him or her healthier overall.
Water exercises can also help with mobility. Water makes it easier to move your joints and muscles, helping you to strengthen them without the heavy impact.
3. Strengthen and Stabilise Your Body
Through stretching, the body becomes more strengthened and stabilised. Problems such as arthritis can stiffen joints and make it difficult to move. By stretching the joints and moving them about, your range of movement improves and increases blood flow to the muscles.
4. Respiratory Illnesses
Believe it or not, physiotherapy can also help treat respiratory illnesses. Since the exercises involved with physiotherapy can improve posture and also improve pain, those suffering with respiratory illnesses and conditions might find it easier to breathe after learning certain exercises. Diseases and conditions such as lung cancer, cystic fibrosis, pneumonia, and asthma may all experience relief with physiotherapy.
5. Rehabilitation from a Serious Injury
Those who have suffered from serious injuries such as car accidents will usually work with physiotherapists to regain strength and coordination. Physiotherapists can help a patient who needs to relearn walking, sitting up, and turning over from more debilitating accidents. In less serious accidents, they may help the patient cope with the pain from a strain or sprain and restore his or her body’s normal functioning.
A sports injury or any kind of overextension of a joint can also be treated by physiotherapy. Aside from massaging the injury and teaching the patient helpful exercises, physiotherapists can also make recommendations regarding braces or taping that may help injured athletes recover and not hurt themselves again.
6. Managing Arthritis
Sometimes arthritis is caused by general aging and sometimes it’s caused by autoimmune disorders. Regardless of the cause of arthritis, it can be difficult to manage the pain and swelling of joints. Keeping the joints moving and mobile helps to treat arthritic pain and can also keep your joints in commission.
