Here’s how you can stay active and fight joint, muscle and nerve pain with physical therapy first
By Dr. Adam Cramer, PT, DPT; MyoFit Clinic
When pain is present, your body will naturally want to limit movement and then compensate to avoid that pain, thereby creating new injuries. You hurt your foot, ankle, shoulder, hand or knee, and medical professionals who are not physical therapists, including orthopedic surgeons, want to immobilize it. They want to put you in a boot, a splint or a brace and tell you to not move it and to go on with your day, then follow up in two weeks to see how it’s going. Well, it still hurts. Immobilizing injuries is old thinking and current evidence supports a movement-based approach to correcting injuries and managing your pain to help you avoid surgery.
The human body cannot heal without oxygen. Blood carries oxygen, so you want to promote blood flow to promote the healing process. The injured structure will ultimately be stronger, you will recover faster, and you’ll have a reduced injury risk with movement-based and manual hands-on treatment when implemented by an independent licensed Doctor of Physical Therapy immediately following an injury. By going to an independently owned physical therapy clinic that is not affiliated with a large hospital system or orthopedic surgeon’s office, you can receive this type of treatment and improve your odds of recovering 100%, successfully avoiding any invasive intervention such as orthopedic surgery.
This is a cultural shift on how to properly manage and treat all neuromusculoskeletal injuries, including joint pain, nerve pain and muscle pain. Healthcare providers that have been in the field for a long time, including orthopedic surgeons, tend to perform the same types of treatments and have the same old mentality regarding managing injuries as they did decades ago. If you keep on doing the same thing you get the same results. Just look at the pain epidemic and opioid abuse that’s out there. Treating pain with medication, including steroid injections, does not work.
There are better ways to manage pain and injuries conservatively, and this is by having a physical therapy-first mentality for all injuries, and by seeing the right physical therapist such as the Doctors of Physical Therapy at MyoFit Clinic. We support evidenced-based practices while taking a common-sense approach to care, where no referral is required and treatment is covered by all insurances.
Dr. Adam M. Cramer, PT, DPT, is a licensed physical therapist, pain specialist and founder and CEO of MyoFit Clinics in Chardon, Ashtabula and Middlefield, Ohio. Call 440-286-1007 for a consultation to avoid orthopedic surgery, or visit MyoFitClinic.com.