Physiotherapy is a type of health and wellness treatment that can help with a broad range of ailments relating to your soft tissue, muscular, or skeletal system. Physiotherapists can assist in the recovery of injuries, illnesses, surgeries, or help you re-adjust to life after a new diagnosis. During treatment, practitioners can use different machines or manual therapy techniques to help alleviate symptoms and promote healing and relief. If you are living with an injury, illness, or condition that causes weakness, pain, or the loss of one or more motor skills, physiotherapy may be the right treatment for you.
What Does a Physiotherapist Do?
Here is a brief summary of the most common practices and treatment types that are used during a physiotherapy session to help facilitate pain management and healing.
● Assessment - During the first portion of your treatment, your physiotherapist will assess your current condition, to both track your progress and to decide which treatments are right for you. During this session, it is important to listen to your practitioner and answer their questions as honestly as possible.
● Manual Therapy - This technique is usually targeted towards the soft tissues surrounding muscular injuries or skeletal misalignments to relieve tension and discomfort. It can include massage, manipulation, or mobilization of affected areas through applied pressure.
● Ultrasound - The use of an ultrasound machine is a painless procedure that uses soundwaves to draw blood flow to specific areas of the body to promote healing by decreasing swelling and inflammation.
● Dry Needling - Your physiotherapist may suggest the use of needles to decrease tightness, initiate blood flow, and reduce muscular discomfort. This involves the insertion of single-use, stainless steel needles into the muscles in swift, short motions. Dry needling may cause some discomfort in the moment, but can greatly reduce muscle tension and pain. If you are afraid of needles, communicate this with your practitioner to see what alternatives can yield the same results.
● TENS Machine - This type of machine uses electrical stimulation to numb sore or painful areas by stimulating the body’s own pain relief nervous systems. This machine is applied to the skin via sticky pads, and feels like a buzzing vibration on the skin for a short amount of time.
● Education and Home Exercises - A physiotherapist is here to answer questions and provide insights into your current condition. They can help give you the vocabulary to explain your symptoms, show you exercises to strengthen the correct muscles, and stretches to work on pain relief and mobility.
When To Visit a Physiotherapist
Physiotherapy is a broad discipline that can help with a variety of conditions. Listed below are some of the most common reasons why our patients book treatments to work with a physiotherapist at our clinic.
1. Pain Management and Reduction
Pain, tension, numbness, or weakness in one or more areas of the body are (unfortunately) normal for many people due to improper or overuse of specific muscles in the body. While these symptoms are normal, living with it doesn’t have to be. A physiotherapist can assess your condition and help you eliminate these symptoms by using targeted approaches to fit your unique needs.
2. Preventing Further Conditions or Treatments
If you are living with a long-term or recurring injury, you may have heard that the longer or worse an injury becomes, the more likely surgery or more drastic measures are required in order to initiate healing. While surgery can be necessary in some cases, for others, physiotherapy can help prevent the need for an invasive procedure.
3. Regaining Functionality
For those of us who have already undergone a procedure or have had an illness that has severely impacted our activities of daily living such as having a hip replacement, attending ongoing cancer treatments, giving birth, or adjusting to a new chronic condition, keeping our wellness and healing on track is a high priority. Attending physiotherapy regularly can allow your practitioner to monitor your progress, relieve pain and tension during the healing process, and engage the correct muscles to regain functionality of affected areas.
4. Increasing Independence
Not only can physiotherapy help improve your physical quality of life, it can also help with emotionally and mentally. Attending ongoing physiotherapy sessions for pain management and healing can help you regain independence from medications, allow for you to resume activities of daily living independently such as dressing, showering, grocery shopping, and cooking, and give you ways to work around certain deficits that you may still have. Studies have shown that increasing independence for people of all ages and backgrounds can improve emotional and mental wellbeing.
These are only a few of the ways a physiotherapist can help you and your specific needs. If you are interested in physiotherapy but are unsure if it is right for you, we encourage you to reach out and ask our team if booking a physiotherapy treatment is right for you.
