Physiotherapy – Joint Position Sense
The human sensory system is designed to give us the information we need to manage the challenges of the world. We take in vast amounts of information every minute of the day, much of it not relevant, the brain deciding what is important and what is not. We are familiar with vision, hearing and touch and consciously and unconsciously use the incoming information to guide our actions and responses in daily life. However, there are two more sensory input systems, related to the others, which are vital to normal functioning. These are the sensory feedback we get from our bodies and the joint position sense.
Profound loss of sensory input is more common than we think as it happens every time we get a numb, dead feeling arm when we wake up. When I woke up with my arm completely numb I moved if off my chest grumpily twice until I began to understand, by feeling the arm gradually from the elbow up, that it was my own arm I was trying to get rid of. The loss of sensibility was so great that as far as I was concerned the arm did not exist and therefore must have belonged to someone else. Without our sensory input we are limited in our abilities.
Tags: human sensory system, Joint Position Sense, JPS, patient, Physiotherapist, proprioception, sensory input
How to Judge Your Physical Therapist
When you need physical therapy, you might need to actually find a physical therapist that you are willing to work with. You thought selecting a doctor was hard – this is equally hard, if not harder! Here are some things to consider.
What kind of education and training does the physical therapist have? While they didn’t have to attend an ivy league university, you do want to make sure that your therapist is educated, trained, and that they have experience dealing with your type of specific problem – successfully. Don’t be afraid to ask direct questions regarding all of this.
Is the therapist licensed properly in your state? You can check with your state’s licensing board, as well as physical therapy organizations for licensing, membership, standing status, and more. Find out if your physical therapist has had complaints or been sued regarding their treatment of patients in the past.
What kind of facilities does the therapist have? Before you make an appointment for actual physical therapy, make an appointment for a consultation, and ask for a tour of the facilities. Do you like what you see? Is the place clean? Is the therapist working in as sterile an environment as possible?
Ankylosing Spondylitis and Physiotherapy
Ankylosing spondylitis is an inflammatory arthritic disease or spondyloarthropathy, classified with reactive arthritis, bowel disease arthritis and psoriatic arthritis. The underlying relationships between these diseases are complex but they are connected by enthesitis (inflammation of the ligament/bone junctions) and by possession of the HLA B27 gene on white blood cells. The enthesitis process at the joint edges can cause fibrosis and then ossification of the area (bone formation).
AS is the commonest of the spondyloarthropathies and its occurrence varies with the occurrence of the HLA B27 gene in the population, AS being less common in the tropics and more common in northern European countries. 0.1 to 1.0% of people are affected but this varies with latitude and is more common in white people. About 1-2% of people with the HLA B27 gene actually develop AS but this becomes 15-20% likelihood if they have a first degree relative with the disease.
Three males to every one female is the ratio of patients with Ankylosing spondylitis, as female patients may have much less obvious symptoms and so be missed from the diagnosis. Young men are the commonest presenting group with most consulting a doctor before they are 40 and up to 20% before they are sixteen years old. 25 years is the average age that someone goes down with the symptoms and is uncommon to find a diagnosis of AS in a person over fifty. It is easily overlooked as it can look like mechanical back pain if care is not taken. On questioning how they are in the morning, a typical answer is very stiff.
Tags: Back Pain, Back Pain Relief, Frozen Shoulder, Injury Management, Pain Management, Piriformis Syndrome, Sciatica
Physiotherapy Importance – Great Solution For Quick Recovery From Pain
The Importance of physiotherapy in recovering from injury just cannot be over emphasized: the smallest injury reacts positively to physical therapy and even serious injury can heal safely and quickly without the need for any other medication of treatment.
While physiotherapy may conjure up images of joint manipulation through twisting of the limbs by the therapist into impossible positions, this is just one of the methods of healing through physiotherapy. Importance of physiotherapy in healing comes from the number of techniques available.
Popping a painkiller like Aspirin to overcome pain is useful only as long as the pain is a non-recurring one and not due to a serious injury. People suffering from back pain realize the importance of physiotherapy because it gives faster relief and facilitates the patient’s recovery through massage, easy to practice exercises and stretches, heat therapy and traction. If the patient has been bed ridden for quite some time, some or a combination of these therapies may be recommended by the therapist to remove muscle stiffness and return their suppleness and elasticity.
Physiotherapy to Help Pain Management
Chronic pain, especially in the back and in the head, plagues a large percent of the populace. This painful condition might be traced back to an injury or to a disease. Whatever the cause, the anguish that it brings can make one do almost anything to have relief and comfort.
Individuals suffering from this recurring malady usually consult medical doctors for ways of alleviating the agonizing pain that they feel. They often go through a procedure which includes a series of tests to establish the reason of the painful condition and of course the prescription of medications to be taken by the patient. Most of the medications prescribed can do wonders in blocking the pain. Unfortunately, these medications also have ensuing side effects. The consequences can be in the form of damages in the organs like liver and kidneys, or it can be an addiction to the medication. Anti-pain medications such as Vicodin help alleviate the distressing condition of the patient but it is also prone to abuse. An individual can become dependent on these anti-pain medications which make matters worse. This spurred doctors to endorse a combination of medication and the use of physiotherapy to counteract the problem of how to cope with pain.
This has brought forth a growth of pain management clinics. An option has been given to chronic pain sufferers. Physiotherapy offers alternative ways to manage pain and patients are given a choice to cope with the situation without the after-effects of anti-pain medications.
Tags: Becoming A Physiotherapist, Changing Views On Physiotherapy, Physiotherapy, To Help Pain Management, What Does A Physiotherapist Do
Why Use Physiotherapy to Treat Back Pain
Physiotherapy dates back to the ancient times but the modern practice of this allied medical care started in the 1920s. It is used to address conditions like recurring pain, musculoskeletal disorders, and movement disorders. The health care professional who is trained in this field of endeavour is known as a physiotherapist or a physical therapist.
Nowadays, the services of physiotherapists are widely sought by a large number of people who suffer from a wide variety of afflictions. The most common of which is back ache. It used to be that when an individual has backache, he goes directly to a doctor. At present, he has another option and that is to engage the assistance of a physical therapist.
Backaches come in different forms depending on the specific affected area. The causes are quite varied ranging with those resulting from injuries due to motor accident, some diseases or an unhealthy lifestyle. It may be in the form of lumbar back pain or thoracic back pain.
Physiotherapy Can Help Cervical Nerve Root Neck Pain
Cervical radiculopathy is a pain syndrome involving one of the cervical nerve roots, with the C7 root (60%) and the C6 root (25%) being the most commonly involved. In younger persons this is due a direct injury which compromises the nerve exit or due to an acute disc prolapse. In older age groups this syndrome can also occur, but in this case is due to narrowing of the nerve exit by arthritic joints and ligament enlargement, disc bulging and bony outgrowths. Cervical nerve root pain referred to physiotherapists for the management of neck pain and arm pain.
The regular lifting of weights over 12 kilograms (25 pounds), operating or driving machinery which vibrates and cigarette smoking are all risk factors for cervical radiculopathy. This kind of neck and arm pain is much less common than the lumbar syndrome of back and leg pain (sciatica). The discs between the cervical vertebrae allow loads to be transmitted down the spine and damp down unwanted shocks. The joint, disc, bone and ligamentous structures form exit spaces for the nerves on the sides of the vertebrae, with up to a third of their space taken up by the nerve. This space can be compromised if degenerative changes occur nearby, leading to nerve compression symptoms.
Physiotherapy and Back Exercises
The cost of low back pain to society is very great, with high financial costs in terms of lost income, lost production and time off work and the costs of medical and physiotherapy and other treatments. This is apart from the personal consequences of the loss of one’s work or job role, loss of the ability to do normal activities and the pain itself. Many back pain treatments have been developed, most of which do not have high levels of effectiveness, and much is down to self management. An exercise programme has been shown to be an important aspect of this and this includes stability work, gym or aerobic exercise and lumbar and pelvic ranges of movement.
Joint ranges of movement are not obvious to most of us but are vital to our ability to perform day to day activities. The shoulder is an important example of a highly functional joint which allows us to place our hands in front of our vision so we can perform precise actions. To do this it has a very large range of movement, allowing us to put our arms behind the back, behind the neck and right above the head. A joint can change due to Read more…
Tags: Back Exercises, Back Pain, Back Pain Relief, Frozen Shoulder, Injury Management, Pain Management, Physiotherapists, Physiotherapy, Piriformis Syndrome, Sciatica
Treating Lumbar Spinal Pain by Physiotherapy
Low back pain is very common and most people have some experience of a back pain episode at some time of life. Attendances at physiotherapy clinics for low back pain are very high so physios have a variety of assessment and treatment techniques to manage spinal pain and improve patients’ function.
A serious medical condition such as cancer or infection is a very uncommon cause of back pain, but several medical problems can present this way and physiotherapists need to be aware of this so they can refer the patient on to the appropriate doctor. The physio will ask about past medical history (cancer, arthritis, diabetes, epilepsy), any loss of weight or appetite, bladder and bowel control, feeling unwell, sleep disturbance and worse pain when lying down to sleep.
The physio is looking for the patient to react as if they have mechanical spinal pain, a condition where normal physical stresses such as sitting or walking have a worsening or easing affect on the pain. The examination starts by observing the posture and movement of the patient during the questioning and the physio follows this by examining the spinal posture and ranges of movement. Abnormalities of posture are common and not always important, with leg length differences, a reduction or increase in the back curves and a scoliosis being common findings.
Tags: Back Pain, Injury, Injury Management, Neck Pain, Pain Management, Physio, Physiotherapist, Physiotherapy, Sciatica, Shoulder Pain, Sports Injuries, Whiplash
Physiotherapy and Stretching
The limitations in flexibility which people exhibit are of interest to a large group of professions from medicine to physiotherapy, osteopathy and chiropractic. Yoga and other eastern traditions have employed stretching techniques called asanas for thousands of years although this was not their primary purpose. The eastern martial arts, such as karate, judo and taekwondo, also emphasise flexibility in the performance of these comprehensive martial ways of living. Flexibility is not precisely defined but in anatomical terms it mostly refers to the ability of joints to go through a particular range of motion.
Ballistic versus Static Stretching
Stretching, when you get down to details, has a lot of controversial and uncertain matters which are unresolved. The pros and cons of static and ballistic stretching is one discussion point. Static stretching is Read more…