Physical Therapy for Joint Pain

Exerting too much strain on your body may be a reason why you are dealing with joint pain today. You probably can’t image putting your body through something like physical therapy as a desirable choice for your joint pain relief. After all, there are so many arthritis treatments out there such as medications, topical agents, and injections to help with many joint pain causes. However, physical therapy is perhaps the healthiest and most natural pain relief for arthritis. Let’s take a look at the many benefits of physical therapy for joint pain.

Why Physical Therapy for Joint Pain?

Anything in life worth having takes a little bit of work. Same can be said for a pain-free life. There are many reasons why physical therapy is a great option for joint pain relief. However, the most important might just be that there are no side effects to physical therapy.

Medications may be habit-forming or make you sick. Some topical agents can be made with synthetic ingredients that might end up doing more harm to the body than good. Physical therapy is just using your own body to work out the joint pain. Let’s take a look at different types of natural remedies for arthritis that uses your body as a form of therapy.

Physical Therapy

This is the most common and practical choice for using the physical body as a healing mechanism for joint pain relief. In physical therapy, a variety of stretching exercises are given to the patient that target the area that is in pain.

What is so great about physical therapy is that the therapist knows every bone in your body. Therefore, they know how to target the areas where you feel pain while strengthening the surrounded areas as well.

Typical Exercises Include:

• Back – Hamstring Stretches, Forward Folds, Knee to Chest Hugs
• Hand/Wrist – Finger Bends, Make a Fist, Wrist Stretches
• Knee – Straight Leg Raises, Hamstring Curls, Wall Squats, Calf Raises
• Shoulder – Pendulum Exercise, Outward Rotation Stretch, Standing Row

Physical therapy for arthritis helps by strengthening the joints that have become weakened by the influx of inflammation growth. By working on these areas, you can reduce overall joint pain and stiffness. In turn, you will gain a wider range of motion.

Occupational Therapy

This is in many ways like physical therapy, but perhaps less intense. The purpose of occupational therapy is to make it so that the patient can live comfortably within the confines of their everyday life. With arthritis, everything from reaching for the top shelf to tying your shoe to opening a pickle jar can become painful and almost impossible to pull off.

By doing occupational therapy, you will learn how to work through the discomfort and in some cases, work around it. Using occupational therapy as your form of arthritis treatment teaches you safe techniques to move around the house as well as how to use equipment like a grabber to reach those high places.

Occupational therapy gives you the tools needed to manage your arthritis pain. It won’t necessarily make the condition any better, but it will prohibit you from making it worse. For those who realize that arthritis will simply not go away, occupational therapy allows you to live comfortably in your own home without adding more joint pain.

Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation (TENS Therapy)

TENS is a form of physical therapy. Here, you use small pulses of electricity that work on areas experiencing arthritis pain. In TENS, electrodes are strategically placed onto the problematic areas. Low levels of electricity are then emitted through electrodes, directly passing into the joint.

This bolt of electricity stimulates the nerve endings that were once signalling to the brain that there was joint pain. Now, the nerve endings are setting off endorphins. These are the hormones we feel when we take painkillers. The difference here is that TENS doesn’t deplete your serotonin levels like opioids, nor is it habit-forming.

Diathermy

The way this form of arthritis treatment works is that high-frequency electrical currents are used to increase blood flow and kill off dead tissues. Depending on the physical therapist, this can be done through micro, radio, or ultrasound waves.

It’s important to note that heat cannot penetrate the skin. With diathermy, the waves are used to generate heat from within the inflamed tissue dying inside of your body. When this happens, blood circulates to the area. Fresh blood will clean out the dead debris and bring new life to the area. For some, this may even rid their body of joint pain.

Massage

Perhaps the most popular joint pain treatment, massages are a great way to provide natural pain relief for arthritis. A massage therapist can specifically target the tissues within the area you are feeling pain.

By moving around fluids, spreading fascia about, and circulating blood, massage therapists can do wonders for treating damaged tissue. In fact, studies have found that getting a massage regularly improves a number of facets that can affect arthritis pain.

These include:

• Improved Hormone Production
• Higher White Blood Cell Count
• Lower Blood Pressure
• Decrease in Inflammatory Cytokines (IL-4 and IL-10)
• Lower Levels of Cortisol (Stress Hormone)

Physical therapy is a great start for treating arthritis. Taking medications becomes common as we get older. This will naturally build up tolerances to arthritis treatment.

Before you start building your body up to tolerate medications, prolong the process by trying physical therapy out first. If this doesn’t work for you, then talk to your physician about medications.

Now that we’ve covered physical therapy as option for joint pain relief, let’s take a look at alternative treatments.