Is Physical Therapy the Fountain of Youth?
Physical Therapy in Oklahoma City, OK
When you learn that physical therapy is a drug-free, surgery-free way to optimize your physical health, you might be asking whether you have found the fountain of youth. Let me tell you that for many people, physical therapy is their fountain of youth, but it takes a physical therapist dedicating their time and attention to you, to your condition, and to the outcomes you desire, your health will improve. But it is a two-way street, for you to get the most out of physical therapy, you have some work to do. You have to spend the time engaged in the activities recommended by your physical therapist whether that is home exercise or employing heat and ice. You have to let your physical therapist know what is working, they will identify some things during evaluation, but being specific in your concerns and being attuned to your body’s changes will help focus the assessment of your deficits. Physical therapy should be enjoyable, it should be educational, and when you embrace physical therapy you can live life pain-free, you live life well.
Is Physical Therapy Exercise?
When thinking about the benefits of physical therapy, some people consider only the visual aspects they can pick up on. The things most commonly seen are a range of motion or stretching, or strengthening because you are not trained to identify the restriction that the physical therapist identified in your neck that led them to give you chin tuck exercises. While physical therapy uses exercise and a physical therapist is likely to prescribe a home exercise program, physical therapy is not the same thing as exercise.
Physical therapy has a stated goal of improving movement and optimizing function. To get your muscles and joints healthy, exercise will be a consideration, but just doing exercises is not going to improve your condition to the level of optimizing your function. Running is a form of exercise, but running is a common precursor to injury. It may come from overuse or improper form, or it may come from an accident like slipping on ice or wet grass, but when a running injury occurs more running is rarely the answer to improving your overall health and well-being.
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Exercise by itself is a component of rehabilitation provided by a physical therapist, but that exercise needs to come with the expertise in movement and anatomical functioning that only a physical therapist can provide. You do not pay your carpenter for a hammer or an artist for their paintbrush, you pay them for the knowledge and expertise that comes from years of study and perfecting their craft. Physical therapy is no different. A hammer and saw are tools of a carpenter much the way exercise, stretching, modalities, and manual therapy are the tools that a physical therapist uses to optimize your function. When picking the right tool to help a patient, a PT is going to use their knowledge and experience in combination with your clinical presentation (i.e., what you are telling her, and what she can see and feel on examination) to prescribe the best plan of care to get you to optimal functioning and to help you Love Your Life!
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What is Physical Therapy?
If physical therapy is not just exercise, what is physical therapy? Physical therapy, at its core, is a helping profession focused on improving functional mobility by removing anatomical limitations, teaching proper movement mechanics, and strengthening the muscles and joints of the patient. This requires the physical therapist to conduct a thorough and ongoing evaluation of your functional abilities. The goals of physical therapy are moving targets. No person lives in a bubble, which means that without continuous evaluation of your condition, your physical therapist cannot tailor your plan of care to your needs.
For example, you might call their Physical Therapist because of some recent back pain. You may improve after a few sessions and then have a seemingly unexplained regression, your back pain got worse. When your physical therapist evaluates you during your next visit, they may notice that your gait (how you walk) is off when they have not seen that from you before. You note a recent fall or “slip,” but thought nothing of it because you hit your knee and got back up. Because your physical therapist is an expert in movement and anatomy, she knows that these two are very possibly related. If physical therapy were only a series of exercises performed the same way time after time, your physical therapist would not pick up on these differences in your gait, which has led to the worsening of your back pain. But she did, so now she can focus on helping your knee, and your gait, and ultimately reduce the back pain you are suffering from.
Because of the ability to assess and re-assess to test what is helping and what is not, physical therapy is the clinical application of the science of human movement and performance. Physical therapy is the evidence-based practice of a branch of healthcare that uses scientific research in combination with your current symptoms and goals to return you to your optimal level of functioning. When done well, physical therapy should reduce pain not increase it, improve flexibility and strength, and optimize your movement for the healthiest body you can have.
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How Long Does Physical Therapy Take?
Because you are unique, your injury was unique, your personal goals are unique, and your physical therapy plan of care needs to be tailored to your situation. The national average for physical therapy is 10.5 to 12 visits, but an average does not tell the whole story. An average looks at a hypothetical person in the middle, someone that probably does not exist and who is not you. If you want to know how long physical therapy is likely to take, you need to see your physical therapist. They will start with a thorough evaluation of your musculoskeletal system, they will ask about your history, and they will do so to provide you with the utmost care. Your physical therapist may even ask similar questions to your doctor, but because the focus of your physician is not your musculoskeletal system, your physical therapist needs to understand your problem in your own words.
Your initial evaluation is just the beginning. A well-designed PT plan of care is going to eliminate the pain but is not going to let you finish until you love your life. Specifically, following your initial evaluation, your PT is going to set up 3 overlapping phases of physical therapy with a final goal of helping you eliminate your pain and prevent it from returning.
Phase I: Pain Relief
For Some physical therapy patients, pain relief is truly about physical pain. Their knee hurts. Their back hurts. Physical therapy does not exercise, in this case, exercise may be helpful, but it may also cause discomfort that needs to be more immediately reduced. To start reducing pain, your physical therapist may employ manual therapy techniques, or apply modalities (e.g., ultrasound, hot pack, ice) to get you out of pain.
Other patients, may have different pain points. For example, they may be dizzy or they may be having bladder leaks. These are not physical pain in the same way that a back gets sore, but they are no less troublesome and a physical therapist can help with this pain, too.
Phase II: Improve Strength and Flexibility
The likelihood that you want to exercise when you are in pain is pretty low. Remember that these three phases overlap. Within a session, we may get you out of pain to work on improving strength and flexibility. Or we may be focused on strength and flexibility, but due to lingering pain, we need to take a step back for a portion of your visit. However, once your pain is reduced, and can be managed, the focus must shift toward improving your overall strength and flexibility. This will prevent the return of the pain in the future.
Phase III: Optimizing Functioning
Physical therapists work with patients across the lifespan from birth to natural death. That means that standardizing your goals should not happen. Optimizing your functioning needs to target your day-to-day life and the things you want to be able to do pain-free. If you want to golf without pain, that’s not the same thing as Tiger Woods returning to a professional career (and unfortunately optimizing your performance does not mean we can turn you into Tiger Woods, but we can help you achieve the best version of your physical performance).
The conclusion of formal physical therapy, however, is not the end. To optimize your physical movement and fend off the pain, you have to maintain your gains. You will likely have targeted movements, some of which may be stretching and strengthening exercises, but others will offer the opportunity for self-assessment. At the point of maintenance, you will continue to assess just as your physical therapist has been doing throughout your treatment to be able to prescribe the right exercises. You won’t walk out a PT, but you will walk out the expert on your body and with the knowledge of how to optimize your functioning.
-FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers of Oklahoma City
FYZICAL Therapy & Balance Centers of Oklahoma City provides orthopedic physical therapy in Lakeside, The Village, Nichols Hills, and surrounding NW Oklahoma City. Our physical therapists are specially trained to treat all types of pain, movement disorders, and musculoskeletal dysfunction including post-surgical recovery from ACL Tear. Our practitioners take a patient-centered individualized approach that focuses on your health needs. If you are unsure about your pain, or you want to see the FYZICAL Difference for yourself, schedule a free consultation today.