Jeremy Przybylo, PT, DPT, DMT here at Prairie Spine is providing information on physical therapy. Read the article below to learn more about PT and its life-changing treatment options. See what advancements Prairie Spine has made to ensure an accurate diagnosis and treatment plan for you. If you have any questions or to schedule an appointment please contact us at 309-691-7774.
When exploring treatment options for joint-related pain and dysfunction, physical therapy (PT) is often the first choice for most doctors and patients. PT is a conservative way to manage certain conditions and avoid surgical intervention if possible. When given the option, most patients would prefer to treat their condition conservatively. This form of treatment will require a significant contribution and commitment on the patient’s part. What patients need to realize, is that PT is a life-changing treatment option. For therapy to be successful, we ask the patient to consider their current life-style and how they came upon their condition. No matter the cause, the patient will need to adopt new habits to manage or treat their condition conservatively.
Let’s explore low back pain for example. Most cases of low back pain can be treated conservatively with PT and possibly medication or injection therapy. But how did the patient get to this point? As therapists, we are here to help determine what factors may be contributing to your condition. In nearly all cases, it’s multifactorial. We look at the patient’s current lifestyle, career choice, hobbies, body structure, eating habits, level of activity or current exercise routine, among many others. For PT to be truly successful, I believe the patient needs to be open-minded and willing to “tweak” their current lifestyle in order to treat their condition successfully.
In many cases, I see individuals who are not exercising regularly. This seems to be a common factor in many cases of low back pain. It is somewhat uncomfortable for patients to hear that they will need to incorporate exercise and physical activity into their busy lives. For an individual who has never exercised, this can be difficult to digest. Most people want to be fixed as soon as possible and go back to how life was before the onset of pain. Again, we need to step back and look at how the patient got to this point. If we continue to participate in activities, or lack of activity, that contributed to the low back pain in the first place, then we are possibly looking at recurrent episodes of pain. This is when I tend to hear, “PT didn’t work for me.” Certainly, our goal is to help people get back to their normal lives. We are just asking patients to make some small adjustments to not only treat the pain but also prevent it from returning.
One simple example of a small life-style adjustment is to adopt a home exercise program. With the help of your physical therapist, you can develop some simple core stabilizing exercises that will help maintain your current progress, or potentially contribute to improvements on your own. If you are dealing with low back pain, visit our website here, and schedule an appointment to see one of our spine specialists. Our physical therapy department can help you look at the different aspects of your life that might be contributing to low back pain. Together we can develop a plan of care that works for you.
