Chronic Pain Physical Therapy Treatment

Chronic pain affects nearly 50 million American adults.

Chronic pain is any pain that lasts more than 3 months. It can become progressively worse and reoccur intermittently, outlasting the normal healing process.

Physical therapy can treat and manage chronic pain safely and effectively without surgery or medication.

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Common Sources of Chronic Pain:

5 Ways Physical Therapy Can Help Chronic Pain

  1. Strengthen muscles and joints

  2. Treat inflammation

  3. Address movement dysfunction that contributes to your chronic pain

  4. Re-educate your nervous system to be less sensitive to pain signals

  5. Help you learn to move and perform daily activities that do no aggravate previous injuries

Chronic Pain Treatments

Passive Treatment

  • Deep Tissue Massage

  • Hot and Cold Therapies

  • TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation)

  • Ultrasound Therapy

  • Pain Neuroscience Education

Active Treatment

Chronic Pain & Exercise

 

Exercise can help you manage chronic pain. Exercise strengthens your muscles, increases your endurance, supports joint stability, and improves the flexibility of your muscles and joints. As you learn to exercise in a way that accommodates your chronic pain, you will experience less pain and be able to perform daily activities with greater function and decreased pain.

Physical therapy addresses the stiffness, soreness, and inflammation common to chronic pain through an exercise treatment plan, manual therapy techniques, and passive treatments. Through the gradual, careful introduction of exercise, the brain is trained to sense the problem area of the body without eliciting hyper-sensitive pain messaging.

Fibromyalgia is a chronic pain condition that affects nearly five million Americans, the majority of whom are women. While the cause of fibromyalgia is unknown, it is thought to be due to changes in the way the nervous system processes pain.

It is a complex syndrome involving generalized chronic musculoskeletal pain and psychosomatic symptoms such as fatigue and anxiety. Symptoms include widespread pain extending on both sides of the body, extreme fatigue, pain at multiple tender points, trouble sleeping, and memory issues.

Physical therapists help patients with fibromyalgia manage pain, reduce fatigue, and improve function and quality of life. Physical therapists design an individualized treatment plan to specifically address the patient’s symptoms and condition.

Treatment involves aquatic therapy, manual therapy, dry needling, pain education, and an exercise program that includes aerobic conditioning and strengthening and flexibility exercises. Exercise is gradually increased over time based on the patient’s ability and tolerance level.

 

Chronic pelvic pain is a common women’s health issue that is often under-treated. Chronic pelvic pain is related to pelvic floor dysfunction, which occurs when the pelvic joints do not work in harmony causing nearby muscles and nerves to tighten and weaken.

Pregnancy and childbirth cause physiological changes to the structure and function of the muscles, nerves, and connective tissue that make up the pelvic floor and can contribute to chronic pelvic pain and dysfunction.

Physical therapy offers treatment for pelvic pain and pelvic floor dysfunction through pelvic floor rehabilitation.

Pelvic floor rehabilitation includes:

  • manual therapy

  • stretching and strengthening exercises

  • postural exercises

  • relaxation techniques

  • internal and external mobilization of the joints and soft tissue

  • bladder training and patient education

  • neuromuscular electrical stimulation

  • sensory, motor, sympathetic, and parasympathetic nerve re-training