Physiotherapy helps in the healing process, prevents muscle imbalances, and improves balance, strength, and flexibility. It can even help you avoid surgery in some cases.
Physiotherapy techniques include hot and cold therapy, electrical stimulation, manual therapy, and modalities like ultrasound and laser therapy. It also addresses any muscle imbalances and compensations, which can lead to further injury.
Flexibility
Flexibility is the ability of muscles, joints, and soft tissues to move through a normal range of motion. It helps maintain appropriate muscle length, promotes efficient movement, and prevents joint injury. Flexibility can be affected by several factors including anatomical structure, genetics, age, gender, and activity levels. It can also be reduced by injury, overtraining, repetitive activities, and general wear and tear on the body.
Physiotherapy in Toowoomba can improve flexibility through exercise and in particular stretching exercises. It can help you regain your flexibility after an injury or for those who are inactive, especially older adults. The treatment modalities can include massage, heat therapy, electrical stimulation, and techniques based on physical stimuli such as ultrasound.
Studies have shown that physiotherapy can decrease the risk of back pain improve posture, and enhance overall health. It can also help with the management of chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and obesity.
Studies have found that a combination of strength, power, and flexibility is more likely to predict injuries than individual musculoskeletal test items alone. This suggests that establishing a relationship between one specific flexibility test item and health outcomes is likely to be difficult. The flexibility of muscles and joints is influenced by the amount of internal resistance that is offered by muscles, soft tissue, and bone. For example, excessively large muscle mass may impose restrictions on the joint’s range of motion, as can excess fatty tissue.
Range of Motion
The amount a joint can bend and straighten, or move around its plane of motion, is called the joint’s range of motion. Similarly, the distance that muscles can stretch is also considered a range of motion.
Physiotherapists at Optimise Health assess and improve the range of motion through exercises that use your muscles to move a joint. They may suggest heat or cold therapy, whirlpool baths, electrical stimulation, massage, and other techniques. They also give you routines to perform at home that will help maintain or improve your flexibility, which will speed up healing and help keep your injury from recurring.
A healthy range of motion is important for the stability and functioning of your bones, joints, muscles, and ligaments. When you have a wide range of movement, your muscles can work at longer lengths and be more efficient—which means that your muscles won’t have to work as hard to contract, which reduces stress on the joints and surrounding tissues.
The type of exercise that increases your range of motion is known as active or active assistive range of motion (AROM) or passive or continuous passive motion range of motion (CPM). During AROM, you are the one moving a body part—for example, lifting your arm above your head. During CPM, an outside force—like your physical therapist—moves a body part through its full range of motion without you doing anything.
Pain Management
Pain is the most common symptom of thousands of diseases, injuries, and conditions that can be treated or managed through physical therapy. It can last for a short time and go away when you heal (acute pain) or can last for months or years and get worse with time (chronic pain). Pain management specialists use medications, procedures, exercises, and therapy to reduce and control it.
For example, if you have arthritis, a physiotherapist may recommend exercises done in warm water, called hydrotherapy, to relieve joint stiffness and improve your range of motion. They might also recommend TENS (transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation), which changes the way pain messages are sent to your brain.
They might also give you exercises that strengthen your muscles and improve your balance, coordination, and endurance to help keep you moving and help ease your chronic pain. Some types of exercise can make your pain less severe, but it’s important to start slowly and increase your activity level gradually to avoid overdoing it.
Some therapists offer other treatments that can ease pain, such as applying ice packs or nitrogen spray to your joints, and some have access to pools where you can do physical therapy in the water. Massage therapy can ease pain by stimulating the soft tissues of your body and improving circulation. Other techniques include stretching, a technique called myofascial release, and joint manipulation and mobilization, which involves moving your joints in a gliding motion to improve function and control pain.
