Physical Therapy For Back And Neck Pain

Since much of back pain is caused by a weakening of the muscles, getting those muscles back into shape is the best course of action for many patients.

But if exercise and activity on your own hasn’t helped and the back pain keeps coming back, your doctor may prescribe physical therapy for you.

Physical therapists will help you learn how to move your body in a healthy manner, while also strengthening your core to support your back. They can work with you in both active and in passive ways to help your body regain its health and to lessen pain naturally.

Active Physical Therapy

This is the physical therapy that most people readily recognize. When you are doing active physical therapy, the therapist is either moving your body for you or they are showing you movements that they want you to repeat during your session.

These are designed to work with your injuries and to help strengthen your body to prevent future troubles.

Depending on the severity of your back pain, you may need to go to physical therapy several times a week or you might simply go one time a week over the course of many months – it depends on your diagnosis.

During these sessions you may:

• Stretch
• Do low impact aerobic work
• Strength training

To most people, this sounds like going to the gym, but under the care of a physical therapist, you will be able to have your injury monitored and regulated for you as an individual. They will be able to recommend specific movements and then create new goals for new movements as you progress.

Physical therapists will also encourage the patients to practice these exercises on their own to continue their progress as well as to continue strengthening their backs.

If you are given a certain set of exercises to do, it’s best that you follow the regimen exactly and talk to your physical therapist about any additional pain that you might feel during the movements.

Passive Physical Therapy

If you have an extremely severe back pain case or if you simply can not do the active exercises yet, especially after surgery, you may be advised to have passive physical therapy.

In these sessions, movements and treatments will be done TO you, instead of you being an active participant.

This kind of passive therapy starts out simply, but can progress into more complicated therapies that can really help to strengthen the muscles of your back.

• Ice packs
• Heat packs
• TENS unit
• Ultrasound
• Iontophoresis

Ice and heat are both used to relax and to contract the area where the pain is being felt. One is not better than the other, as such, but some patients report that one does feel better to them, so pay attention to the way your body responds.

For some patients, rotating these two therapies is the best choice for them as it will help to control spasms as well as swelling in the area. Try leaving the packs on the area for up to twenty minutes, then remove for the same amount of time, and then switch to a new pack.

A TENS unit is a bit more complicated of a passive therapy and it should be administered by someone who is trained in using the device.

This is a device in which pads are placed at certain points of your body in order to stimulate your muscles as well as to help rewire your nerves so that you don’t feel pain.

Not everyone responds well to the TENS unit, so it may not work for you. But in many cases, this therapy helps to control the pain during movements and can help the body figure out how to change the direction of the pain so that it doesn’t go to the brain and be felt by the patient.

Ultrasound is when the physical therapist uses an ultrasound probe to send deep waves of heat into the muscles and the back to provide relief. This technique is non-invasive and can help the body heal itself with the relaxing warmth.

The only trouble with the ultrasound technique is that it typically doesn’t have long lasting benefits and needs to be repeated during a few therapy sessions.

When you are having an acute back pain episode, a doctor may prescribe iontophoresis for the area. This is a therapy in which steroids are injected into the skin to lessen the inflammation of the area, helping to dull or relieve the pain altogether.

As with any therapies, be sure to check with your insurance before setting up the appointment to be certain that your health insurance plan will cover the treatment.

Not every health insurance plan will pay for TENS therapy, for example.

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Filed under: Effective Therapies for Back Pain

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