Joint pain can have a significant impact on your life, preventing you from moving around and doing things you enjoy. However, physical therapy can help you relieve your joint pain. These are some treatments that can help you regain your life and freedom as you reduce or eliminate your pain.
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Manual Therapies
Manual therapies include joint mobilization, therapeutic taping, massage and active release techniques. Joint mobilization involves passively moving the joints and muscles. This approach takes the pressure off of your joints and strengthens your muscles and other connective tissues to increase your range of motion and joint function while reducing pain.
Massage targets your muscles and tissues to remove toxins and increase circulation. It also stimulates muscles and removes lactic acid from your tissues to reduce pain. Taping can offer temporary relief and protect your joints from further damage. This technique restricts your joint movement and both activates and inhibits muscle movement, depending on where the tape is. It also improves swelling by compressing the soft tissues around your joint.
Active release techniques involve stretching the areas where you have pain along with massage or other types of pressure. The pressure focuses on improving blood flow, breaking up scar tissue or healing injuries and adhesions.
Joint Comfort Approaches
Physical therapy Oregon City focuses on techniques that comfort your joints while strengthening your body. These include manual therapy, but may also involve hot and cold therapies. Heat increases joint lubrication, stimulates healing naturally and relaxes your muscles. Cold actually improves swelling and inflammation, which reduces pain. Often, your therapist will alternate heat and cold and suggest you do the same at home.
Your therapist will also give you exercises. These movements will strengthen your muscles to support your joints. These exercises should be gentle and not impact the joint. You will likely use machines, such as recumbent bicycles or elliptical machines. You may even do your exercises in water to reduce the weight on your joints when you complete them.
Your PT will also involve deep stretching sessions. This lengthens and relaxes the muscles and joints. Your therapist should give you exercises and stretches to complete at home or on your own so you can support your healing process every day.
Enhancing Mobility Comfort
During your PT sessions, you will also learn techniques that help you improve your balance. These techniques protect you from falling so you don’t reinjure or further injure your joints. You may also experience electrical stimulation, diathermy and dry needling, which target the specific nerves that cause you pain. These trigger point techniques improve your circulation, remove unhealthy tissues and relieve pain.
If you need additional support, a therapist may fit you with support devices, such as custom-fit orthoses or braces. These devices reduce the pressure you put on your joints as you complete your daily tasks.
If you have joint pain, research the benefits of physical therapy and how it can reduce your pain specifically. Get more information about the specific techniques that may improve your quality of life by reducing your pain and strengthening your body. You can also search for physical therapy jobs near me if you want to help others manage their joint pain.
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