Pain and flexibility. In Physical Therapy, they are so closely intertwined, as flexibility is almost always one of the main culprits as to “why” you have pain, and also one of the primary solutions as to how to get rid of your pain. When a back pain patient starts up a course of Physical Therapy in the Jersey City or Elizabeth clinic, we always incorporate an extensive stretching regimen, and there’s a very simple reason why:
Sometimes, when physical issues happen, it’s the mental rigors of an injury that can be more challenging than the physical ones. With Gloria, it was no different. After suffering from multiple physical issues, including low back and leg pain, Gloria’s anxiety about getting through each and every single day had increased significantly.
Is back pain causing you to move a little slower and more cautiously?
If left untreated, chronic back pain can lead to long-term spinal joint and possibly nerve damage. Back pain is one of the most common physical complaints that people suffer from and more than 80% of the US population will experience back pain at some point in their lifetime. Back pain can interfere with your ability to bend, kneel, lift, reach, do work and enjoy time with your family. Not to mention, it can make you down right irritable and affect others around you.
As the summer ended, we all, as parents, went through our yearly ritual of getting our kids reading for the upcoming school year. As I picked them up after the first day of school, I found myself staring at all these kids, many of which already had loads of books, with bad back pack form. I just shook my head, as I just knew that back pain was just around the corner. Despite their potential problems, backpacks are great when used properly. Before you buy one, though, consider a backpack’s construction.
You’re injuring yourself at work — daily. But I have an office job, you think; my workplace is altogether too safe. Actually, that’s the problem. Sitting at a desk all day, and the repetitive motions that accompany that sitting, cause microtrauma in our bodies. New studies are beginning to reveal that extended periods of sitting and sedentary behavior have a significant
negative effect on our well-being — and an even greater impact on our overall health than our diets.
When Physical Therapy patients come into our clinic, one of our main goals is to help patients get back that feeling of independence. With each Physical Therapy visit, every patient starts to take little steps toward feeling like they’re getting back to normal, getting back to their every day routine. And who doesn’t like a little bit of normal?
Living with pain is not fun at all. It’s exactly the reason why the first phase of Dr. Asha’s 3 Phases of Healing in Physical Therapy is to get rid of any pain, numbness, and tingling symptoms that you are experiencing.
It’s easy for me as a Physical Therapist to tell my patients that they’re lives are about to be completely changed for the better because they’ve made the decision to come in for Physical Therapy. But it’s even easier for me to prove my point when they actually begin their Physical Therapy, because it’s one thing to say it, but another thing completely to see it working on yourself day after day.
When knee pain strikes as a result of running, the most common step that is taken when starting Physical Therapy is to first stop running altogether. As with any injury, when you find out what activity is causing the pain to occur, you have to minimize your exposure to the pain-causing activity while treating so you can get pain levels down, as per the 3 Phases of Healing that Dr. Asha also uses for her sciatica and back pain Physical Therapy patients. But with the AlterG Treadmill, if you know how to use it correctly, you can be much more efficient by using one trick.
As we’ve continued our series on sciatica, I think it would be a great idea to give you a sense of what to look for. Not all back pain is created equal, and it would be very helpful to know what to look for when looking for symptoms that might signal sciatica, so that you can communicate this to your Physical Therapist when you go in for your Physical Therapy appointment.
