Today, I’d like to talk to you about what physical therapy is, what we treat, and why it may benefit you to have a physical therapy evaluation.
What Do Physical Therapists Treat?
First, let’s start off with, what do we treat? We treat a broad range of ailments, injuries, and disorders. The list would include, but not be limited to:
- Neurologic conditions, such as
- parkinson’s disease
- people recovering from a stroke
- multiple sclerosis
- inner ear or vestibular systems that might be causing balance or dizziness issues.
- Pelvic health issues, such as
- bowel or bladder dysfunction.
- Disorders of the jaw such as TMJ, which might result in either pain with the jaw or inability to fully open the mouth.
- We specialize in musculoskeletal care. That’s a big mouthful, but that’s basically anything dealing with muscles or joints.
As physical therapists, we are movement specialists, meaning we are highly trained to analyze and assess how the human body moves and functions.
How Do Physical Therapists Assess These Conditions?
In addition to analyzing the body, we are also trained to perform a whole battery of functional or special tests.
A functional test might be seeing how well or how far someone can walk. There’s also some objective balance tests to determine whether somebody’s a fall risk.
Special tests are typically hands-on tests that give us a good insight to what a specific muscle or joint is doing. I always tell people I don’t have any special powers. I don’t have x-ray vision or MRI vision; but typically, if you do a thorough hands-on evaluation, you get a really good picture of what is going on in a specific joint or with a specific muscle.
What Happens After the Evaluation?
Once the evaluation part of an exam is completed, we move on to the treatment. So what do we do? How do we treat people?
First, when we’re done with the evaluation, the most important thing is making sure you have a good understanding of what you’re dealing with. What are you up against?
And then number two is, how are we going to solve it? What do we need to work on to make positive changes to get you out of the situation that you’re in?
Why Should I See a Physical Therapist?
One of my favorite quotes is, “No one cares what you know, until they know how much you care.” And I think as physical therapists, we absolutely exemplify that. We have the absolute luxury of being able to spend a lot of time with our patients. I don’t think there is really any other discipline in the medical community that gets to spend as much one-on-one time with their patients.
We get to know you. We get to know what you’re struggling with, but also what you hope to accomplish, and what you want to get back to. All of our care is always individualized. You’re never “a patient that had a total knee.” You’re a patient that’s going through a total knee, but maybe also a grandma with young grandkids who wants to be able to get down on the floor to play with them.
And to me, that is a huge and important thing to know about your goals, aspirations, and daily activities. Then we can help you get back on the road of recovery.
How Do Physical Therapists Treat These Conditions?
1. Therapies
As far as treatments, we do a lot of hands-on therapy here, what we’d call manual therapy. That involves soft tissue work to get muscles that are stiff moving better.
It also involves what we would call joint mobilizations. That is actual stretching for the joint and the tissue that surrounds it. Again, this is done with the idea of reducing pain and getting you moving better.
We also do balance training as I mentioned earlier on the vestibular rehab; but then we also do generalized strength. Some people come in and they have weaknesses. We work on getting them stronger.
And then we also do the sports med component where we’re getting people not only back to walking and moving better but getting back out on the field or the diamond. This involves a lot of functional testing to make sure that individual is ready to perform at the highest level, in a safe manner.
2. Modalities
Additionally, to help you get down that road to recovery, we do what we call modalities. That could be hot packs or cold packs. We use a vasopneumatic compression device, which helps to reduce swelling or edema in limbs.
We do ultrasounds. We’ve got a couple of lasers here in our clinic. E-stim, which is using electricity to reduce pain or get a muscle to move better. These are a few amongst a whole host of things that we do to help you move, feel better, and get you down that road to recovery.
Visit Rebound Physical Therapy to Get Back in Action
If you’re out there and you’re struggling, or if you’re just not able to live your life to its fullest, don’t sit back and “deal with” a functional limitation or an inability to do something. We want to get you moving and feeling better. Call our Topeka, KS, office at (785) 271-5533 to schedule a FREE physical therapy screening.
