Physical Therapist in Oswego, NY

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Category: Physio

Apollo Physical Therapy- Oswego, NYBlogPhysio
By admin 0 Comments Exercises, Physio ,

How Physical Therapy Can Prevent Injuries

You may not think of physical therapy as part of a preventive health care regimen, but physical therapy can do much more than treat acute injuries after the fact.

Boost your athletic longevity

You don’t have to be a professional athlete to be at risk for injury, but most athletes have experienced an injury at one point or another.

A physical therapist can evaluate your form or movement and guide you through personalized warmup techniques, such as riding a bike, that can help improve your athletic performance while decreasing the risk of future damage.

Help with your daily routine

Simple, seemingly low-risk activities, such as typing, cleaning, or sitting at your desk, can cause debilitating and long-lasting injuries due to the poor posture and repetitive motions that people generally use for these activities.

With physical therapy, you learn how proper posture and wrist placement can help prevent injuries.

Strengthen your muscles

Your muscles help you accomplish everything from chewing to picking up a pen. But overused muscles leave you open to injury. Fortunately, strength training doesn’t require hours at the gym. With physical therapy, you can strengthen muscles with basic exercises and stretches.

Increase your mobility

Your range of motion may decrease as you get older, making it challenging to accomplish the most basic tasks. Personalized treatment plans and stretching techniques increase your mobility, allowing you to continue doing the everyday activities and hobbies that you love.

Improve your balance

Some health conditions increase your risk of injury or falls, including stroke or Parkinson’s disease. Age is also a contributing factor to falls. To preempt such mishaps, your physical therapist works with you on your unique areas of concern to improve your stability and balance.

Prevent recurring injuries

Injuries are more likely to recur if you’ve suffered one in the past. With the assistance of physical therapy, you can strengthen the area previously injured to help block a repeat of the damage.

Manage chronic pain

Chronic pain can leave you prone to injury. You may overcompensate for your pain by, for instance, favoring one arm over the other. Physical therapy can help you build strength and minimize pain with tailored pain management strategies.

Don’t wait until it’s too late to prevent an injury from occurring. If you would like to incorporate physical therapy as part of your healthy lifestyle, schedule a consultation with one of our providers.

By admin 0 Comments Physio, Therapy ,

Customized Physical Therapy Can Ease Lower Back Pain

Patients suffering from most types of low back pain are often referred for physical therapy for four weeks as an initial conservative (nonsurgical) treatment option before considering other more aggressive treatments, including back surgery. The goals of physical therapy are to decrease back pain, increase function, and teach the patient a maintenance program to prevent future back problems.

Common forms of physical therapy include:

  1. Passive physical therapy (modalities), which includes things done to the patient, such as heat application, ice packs and electrical stimulation. For example, a heating pad may be applied to warm up the muscles prior to doing exercising and stretching, and an ice pack may be used afterward to sooth the muscles and soft tissues.
  2. Active physical therapy, which focuses on specific exercises and stretching. For most low back pain treatments, active exercise is the focus of the physical therapy program.

Exercise Benefits for Low Back Pain

Lumbar spine (low back) stability is largely dependent on the supporting abdominal (stomach) and low back musculature. The abdominal muscles provide the initial stabilizing support through their ability to generate pressure within the abdomen which is exerted posteriorly on the spine, thus providing an anterior support column (from the front of the spine). The low back muscles stabilize the spine from the back and lead to posterior support. Simply stated, the bony spine and discs are surrounded by muscles, and the stronger these specific muscles are, the less stress is placed on the discs and joints of the spine. The patients should develop a ‘belt’ of muscle around their spine.

By admin 0 Comments Physio, Studies, Work Injury

Identifying And Treating Pain From Nerve Tension

Nerve gliding exercises try to separate the nerve from the surrounding structures by sliding the nerve via joint movements that lengthen the nerve bed (Coppieters & Butler, 2008). Lengthening the nerve bed also stretches the nerve. This can lead to increased neural tension and intraneural pressure. If this stretch is held statically, it can decrease blood flow to the nerves, thus leading to cell death. On the other hand, dynamic movements can assist in pumping out some of the edematous fluid that compresses the nerve. That being said, any time the nerve bed is elongated there is a chance for increasing symptoms. Due to the risk of increasing symptoms, these exercises are not as common as they once were.

A similar technique often confused with nerve gliding is nerve sliding. Nerve sliding works by elongating the nerve bed at one joint, while simultaneously shortening it at another (Coppieters & Butler, 2008). The reasoning is that the nerve can move without increasing strain. It was found that nerve sliding creates the largest nerve excursions with the least amount of strain. Nerve gliding can potentially create even larger nerve excursions at proximal joints but it creates significant strain. Due to the chance for symptom provocation, nerve gliding should only be considered in non-acute and non-surgical conditions. It is here that nerve sliding is the preferred intervention.

A recent study found that the sequencing of nerve tensioning/gliding at each joint was irrelevant when looking at net strain on the nerve (Boyd et al, 2013). However, it was also shown that variation in sequencing of joint movements altered where the nerve strain occurred first. This has potential clinical implications as we may be able to target specific locations if we know where the restrictions lie. The real-world applicability is unknown at this point as there have not been any studies performed in this area.

When comparing education to education + neural tissue management (both nerve sliding/gliding were used with cervical manual therapy), it was found that the intervention group had superior results compared to the control with no significant increased risk of exacerbations (Nee et al, 2012). Not only is it important to note the benefit of these nerve gliding/sliding exercises, but it brings up the point that we should also be looking at the spine. Other than some form of direct trauma, another source of nerve irritation can come from poor spinal mechanics that lead to neural irritation. Treating just the nerve may mean treating just the symptoms in some cases. It is essential to look at the spinal and restore normal mechanics if any abnormalities are found, especially because a manipulation may immediately show symptom relief as well.

There are two additional treatment techniques we wanted to mention. A case study we looked at utilized Active-Release Therapy (ART) for saphenous nerve entrapment (Settergren, 2012). In general, ART involves a technique where the clinician applies a force to the restricted area while the patient actively moves to “release” the adhesion. The technique often causes significant pain during the maneuver but is followed by increased mobility and decreased pain. This method may not be as useful to most clinicians as it involves extensive training to correctly perform and the research is limited in the area. Another technique that we often perform and have had success with is Instrument-Assisted Soft Tissue Mobilization (IASTM). While we have personally seen immediate effects on pain and neural symptoms with this, again the research is limited in the area.