With Jennifer, although she did experience an unfortunate bout of back pain which then moved into her shoulder and neck due to overcompensation, I am happy to report that with Physical Therapy, we were able to help her rid her life of back pain symptoms completely!
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.
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?
So you’ve gotten through part 2 of my top home exercises for back pain due to sciatica without pain. Great! Looks like you’re progressing quite well with my 3 Phases of Healing. I think it’s time to take these Physical Therapy exercises to the next step and get up onto our feet, shall we?
In my previous post, we began the series on my favorite exercises for back pain coming from sciatica that I give all my Physical Therapy patients in the Elizabeth and Jersey City clinics. We started out with a simple prone prop up on the elbows. Now that we’ve got the basic prone prop up on the elbows down pat, and once that exercise can be performed with absolutely no discomfort or pain, we can now follow the progression into the next motion:
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 undergoing a course of Physical Therapy for sciatica, an efficient recovery includes home exercises that patients must complete in order to have the best chance and reducing pain symptoms and getting better faster. Studies have shown that skilled Physical Therapy in the clinic in conjunction with a good home exercise program produce the best and most efficient recoveries from back pain due to sciatica.
So what we’ll do is go through my top home exercises for sciatica that I regularly recommend for all my back pain and sciatica Physical Therapy patients
Have I really made sure that my patient has all of their questions answered? Do they feel secure about this visit? These are questions that I’m always asking myself when my patients are progressing through their Physical Therapy visits.
And this is exactly why we, as a group of Physical Therapists, have made it our company culture over the past 13 years to make sure that we take our time with our patients, and that all their needs are met during each and every visit.
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.
