Physiotherapy and its Benefits
Have you ever experienced an injury or illness that restricted your ability to move or function? Almost everybody has gone through such a phase at least once in their lifetime. Often people with injuries or chronic pain prefer to go for surgery, as they believe it is a fast and more effective way to treat the issue. However, most of the primary care health professionals prefer physiotherapy as the first approach for treatment. They believe that it is less harmful and has long term benefits. Let’s know more about it.
What is Physiotherapy?
Also known as physical therapy, it is one of the science-based health professions that aim to treat acute or chronic pain, physical impairments, and restricted movements caused by injury, trauma, or illness. It makes use of exercise, mobilization, health education, and physical and electrical agents to deliver you the desired benefits.
Medical practitioners who are licensed to practice this therapy are known as physiotherapists. They have earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physiotherapy. They believe in following a holistic approach towards achieving’s the patient’s health and well-being as per their lifestyle. A good therapist would be the one who is able to listen to the patient’s problems and understand them to devise the right treatment procedure.
Physiotherapy helps improve illnesses or disorders related to the following areas:
- Neurological: It helps in treating neurological diseases such as stroke, chronic back pain, multiple sclerosis, facial palsy, spinal cord injury, etc. This affects an individual’s vision, balance, daily activities and mobility, and muscle strength. Therapists often combine physical therapy with psychotherapy to improve the neurological health of a patient.
- Cardiovascular Here, it helps to treat a variety of disorders related to pre and post-cardiac surgery and heart attacks. Patients who have gone through coronary bypass surgery opt for physical therapy to increase their endurance and functional independence.
- Respiratory: Physiotherapy helps to treat patients who have pulmonary disorders, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and pulmonary fibrosis. It can clear up lung secretions that individuals suffer from cystic fibrosis and asthma, thereby improving their breathing.
- Orthopedic: It includes the treatment of injuries and diseases related to the musculoskeletal system, such as post-operative orthopedic procedures, arthritis, sprains, strains, back and neck pain, sports injuries, fractures, and amputations.
Besides, there are so many other segments where this holistic approach of treatment has proved to be highly beneficial, such as women’s health, sports rehabilitation, and pediatric treatments.
Benefits of Physiotherapy:
This method of treatment offers a wide array of benefits, as it is based on the overall well-being of the individual in a natural way. Here are a few:
- Helps to manage pain: Physical therapy helps to mobilize joints and soft tissue and restore muscle function in order to reduce chronic pain by following specific techniques and exercises.
- Surgery can be avoided: Physical therapy can help to avoid surgery in some health cases, as it helps in healing injured tissues and improving mobilization by eliminating pain. If you have already undergone surgery, it will help you recover faster.
- Restores balance and mobility: After facing a serious injury or undergoing surgery, people often face difficulty to get back on their feet soon. Even daily routine activities like eating, writing, and balancing seem hard to be performed on their own. The therapy helps the person to walk and move around safely and improves balance and coordination, thereby reducing the risk of falling.
- Helps recover from Stroke: People often lose their partial body movement after a stroke. The therapy helps to regain strength in those body parts improves whole body posture and balance and brings about endurance and functional independence to manage daily activities.
- Helps in age-related issues: There are issues that people suffer due to age, such as arthritis and osteoporosis. If you get knee, hip, or joint replacement done, physical therapy helps in recovering by alleviating pain. It also helps to manage arthritis and osteoporosis.
It must have been clear by now that physiotherapy is not like any other medical treatment that relies on giving medications only. It is a holistic way of treatment that provides an overall benefit to the whole being. It follows a natural way of strengthening the body parts within a certain period of time unlike surgery or any other fast but invasive treatment method. So, to get the best physiotherapy treatment contact a professional physiotherapist.
