Chronic pain can make getting through daily life a chore, but physical therapy can help and Bacci & Glinn provides is well equipped to provide chronic pain treatment in Visalia.
Pain is a part of life. Whether it’s a crick in your neck from sleeping wrong, getting your finger caught in the car door or rolling your ankle on a tree root, everyone has had their share of painful experiences.
Pain is the body’s way of telling us that something is wrong and that you should do something to address it. In most cases, this will happen on its own after some time has passed or with some form of treatment, and after the injury has healed, the pain goes away. For some people, however, pain continues long after healing. When it lasts for three months or more, the condition is called chronic pain, which can become a complicated and frustrating problem to deal with.
When you experience an injury, sensors that detect pain become turned on in that injured area. These pain sensors then send a message in the form of an electrical signal to the brain, which processes this signal and sends out a message that you are hurting. Usually, this signal stops sending messages when the cause of pain is resolved (which means the injured area has healed.) But with chronic pain, these nerve signals continue to send messages that you are in pain even though there is no longer any injury.
It’s not always clear why chronic pain occurs, and in some cases it may develop without any known injury. For some people, pain from conditions like headaches/migraines, arthritis, back pain, infections or nerve damage is the original source of the pain signals that continue in the long term. Chronic pain symptoms may include a dull ache or feelings of throbbing, burning, stinging, soreness or stiffness.
Don’t Let Chronic Pain Control Your Life
Chronic pain can prove to be a real nuisance that gets in the way of many aspects of daily life, but fortunately, physical therapy can help. Physical therapists see patients with all types of chronic pain problems frequently, and are equipped to treat them with a variety of effective interventions, such as:
- Natural treatments, no medications
- Education on how the brain and nervous system are causing the pain
- Strengthening and flexibility exercises
- Hands-on therapy techniques
- Posture and body mechanics awareness
- Laser therapy if needed
Research has shown that physical therapy can be beneficial for patients with chronic pain, and the CDC released guidelines last year that encouraged the use of physical therapy over opioids to address chronic pain:
The contextual evidence review found that many nonpharmacologic therapies, including physical therapy, weight loss for knee osteoarthritis, psychological therapies such as CBT, and certain interventional procedures can ameliorate chronic pain.
So if you’ve been dealing with chronic pain for a long while that won’t seem to improve, seeing a physical therapist is the best decision you can make. Through education and evidence-based treatments, your physical therapy treatment program can certainly put you on the right path to recovery.
If you need help with chronic pain, please contact us today.
