Health Blog | I Give You Health

Article by Winifred Bragg, MD

Patients with back pain often ask me, “How will physical therapy help me with my back pain?” and “If I am hurting how will exercise help me?”

Not all physical therapy programs are suited for everyone. Therefore, patients should discuss their medical history with their qualified healthcare professionals before beginning treatment.

However, a well-trained physical therapist can apply a variety of treatments, such as heat, ice, electrical stimulation, and muscle energy techniques to areas where back pain originates.

There are five areas where physical therapy can be highly beneficial in the treatment of low back pain:

1. Teaching Proper body mechanics 2. Providing postural recommendations3. Teaching Specific Exercises to increase flexibility and to strengthen abdominal and low back musculature 4. Enhancing Weight Control 5. Providing Manual Therapy Techniques.

If you believe that you don’t have the time to participate in a physical therapy program, perhaps these benefits will change your mind.

1. Understanding Proper body Mechanics An understanding of proper body mechanics can reduce your need for medication and keep your spine healthy. An individualized physical therapy program can be helpful.

Physical therapists help patients to learn how to take care of their back and how to manage recurrent episodes of pain, thereby reducing the need for medications.

Body mechanics describes the way we move as we perform our daily activities. It focuses on how we sit, stand, bend, lift, and even how we sleep. Poor body mechanics can be the cause of back problems. When we don’t move correctly, the spine is subjected to abnormal stresses that can lead to degeneration of spinal structures like discs and joints, and can result in unnecessary wear and tear over time.

It is very important to understand proper body mechanics in order to keep your spine healthy.

2. Providing postural recommendations

In my extensive experience treating patients with back pain, I have seen time and time again the importance of postural recommendations in relieving their pain. Good posture is key in the prevention and control of back pain, and who is better suited to teach patients about postural recommendations than the physical therapist?

While often overlooked, a good understanding of proper sitting and standing postures can greatly eliminate back pain.

People often associate back pain with lifting, but poor posture is also a culprit.

Although improper lifting can result in back pain, correcting your posture is key. The deleterious effects of improper sitting can result in significant pain.

It’s easy to develop bad habits. However, good body mechanics are based on good posture.

Being aware of your posture during all of your daily activities is the best way to ensure you are using good body mechanics. Education on proper posture and body mechanics are an essential part in reducing and preventing back pain and thereby helping to avoid surgery.

3. Teaching Specific Exercises

As your back pain improves, your physical therapist can teach you specific exercises to increase flexibility, strengthen the back and abdominal muscles, and to improve your posture.

Stretching increases flexibility and increased flexibility helps you comfortably and fluidly perform activities of daily living. This will also help reduce the risk of muscle, joint and tendon injuries. Stretching can also often alleviate low back pain.

Muscle tightness in the quadriceps, hamstrings, hip flexors and low back muscles is a common cause of low back pain. Stretching these muscles will often eliminate the pain.

In physical therapy, strengthening the muscles of the abdomen, back and legs helps to reduce the symptoms of nerve compression.

4. Enhancing Weight Control

As you gain strength in your lower extremities, abdominal and back muscles, your endurance will improve. This will give you more energy and can enhance weight control, and often weight loss when accompanied with monitoring your caloric intake.

As your body tones and your stamina increases; you will improve your exercise tolerance and lose some body fat. Studies have shown that back pain decreases when you are at your ideal body weight. 5. Providing Manual Therapy Techniques

Physical therapists use a wide variety of manual techniques to help restore normal alignment and joint movement. A well-trained manual physical therapist can mobilize joints in a manner that a patient cannot do his or herself. They teach patients how to maintain good alignment once it is properly restored.

Physical therapy provides several benefits in the treatment of back pain. One of the benefits of exercise can be the reduction of back pain.

By adhering to your postural recommendations maintaining good body mechanics and performing your home exercise program, you can control your pain better.

Regular use of these techniques can help prevent pain from recurring, correct current back problems, help prevent new ones, and relieve back pain, particularly after an injury.

Proper exercise strengthens back muscles that support the spine and strengthens the abdomen, arms, and legs, reducing strain on the back. Exercise also strengthens bones and reduces the risk of falls and injuries.There are many different causes of back pain. Therefore, it is important that your physical therapy program be individualized to meet your specific needs.

An individualized physical therapy program where your physician works closely with your physical therapist can be beneficial to you in helping to control your back pain.

For lasting benefits, it is important to continue to perform your home exercise program once the physical therapy program has been discontinued.Working with your physician and physical therapist can help to reduce your back pain.

©2011 Winifred D. Bragg, MD. All Rights Reserved.

About the Author

Dr. Bragg is a keynote speaker, author and physician whose strategies to achieve success are based on her personal experience. She has taught thousands why staying strong and maintaining a strong mental toughness are essential to overcoming adversities.

Dr. Bragg uses state of the art techniques to provide non-surgical solutions to treat orthopedic problems of the upper and lower extremities as well as various conditions of the spine.

You can contact Dr.Bragg at her websites http://www.Doctor Bragg.com and http://www.knockoutpain.com. to motivate and empower your organization.

The Cosby Show The Cosby Show was and still is one of the greatest sitcoms in television history. It ran for 8 seasons from 1984-1992. In this episode: After a weekend eating binge, Cliff hopes to flush out his system before his upcoming physical. The doctor tells him that he is in pretty good shape, but has very high cholesterol. NO COPYRIGHT INFRIDGEMENT INTENDED. FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

In this podcast— Staying Well through Physical Activity “— American Cancer Society Director of Nutrition and Physical Activity Colleen Doyle, MS, RD, and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Len Lichtenfeld, MD, discuss the importance of regular exercise along with a balanced diet in maintaining a healthy weight and reducing your cancer risk.

The Cosby Show The Cosby Show was and still is one of the greatest sitcoms in television history. It ran for 8 seasons from 1984-1992. In this episode: After a weekend eating binge, Cliff hopes to flush out his system before his upcoming physical. The doctor tells him that he is in pretty good shape, but has very high cholesterol. NO COPYRIGHT INFRIDGEMENT INTENDED. FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.

Exercise is an integral part of life for everyone. This becomes especially true in the case of a person with diabetes, in which case it is part of the treatment of diabetes as well. For a diabetic exercise should be a daily routine. Daily exercise would help a diabetic person to have good blood sugar control in addition to making him or her physically fit. Daily exercise also would make a diabetic person less susceptible for a heart attack and nerve damage from diabetes.

Exercise improves blood sugar control

Exercise provides great benefits to diabetics and it plays an excellent role in controlling the blood sugar. A properly designed exercise schedule in combination with a healthy diet is the recipe for success for a person with diabetes. When you do physical activity your muscles take up the glucose from the blood circulation and use it for the muscular activity thus maintaining a normal blood glucose level. Exercise also increases the tissue sensitivity to insulin making the effect of insulin more effective thus further helping to reduce the blood glucose level.

Exercise reduces weight

Exercise is also helps people with diabetes to reduce weight. Weight gain is closely associated with type-2 diabetes. Exercise decreases the fat stores and thus decreases the extra demand that is put on the already compromised beta cells.

Exercise decreases the need for diabetic medication

Exercise reduces insulin resistance of the tissues and makes body tissue more responsive to the action of insulin. If you have only mild diabetes, a combination of exercise and dietary control may be the only form of intervention needed for your diabetes control. Even in persons who have more severe degree of diabetes exercise would decrease the need for diabetic medication because of decreased insulin resistance.

Exercise improves circulation

Most of the complications that are associated with diabetes are related to impairment of circulation that is caused by diabetes. This is especially true for those who develop diabetic foot as a complication of diabetes. Exercise improves circulation especially to arms and legs and thus may prevent development of diabetes related complications.

Exercise improves cholesterol level

Heart attack (myocardial infarction) is one of the major causes of death in people with diabetes. Exercise would increase the good cholesterol (HDL cholesterol) and lower the bad cholesterol (LDL cholesterol). Exercise also reduces the triglyceride levels. By improving the cholesterol values exercise provide increase protection from heart attack diabetic patients.

Exercise lowers blood pressure

Diabetic patients are highly prone to complications of high blood pressure. Regular exercise would lower blood pressure and thus may protect diabetic patients from hypertension (high blood pressure) and its complications.

It is clear from the above discussion that exercise is a very crucial component in the life of a person with diabetes. Regular exercise, in combination with a healthy diabetic meal would prove to be of significant benefit for a people with diabetes.

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www.MeTheDoctor.com Coping with the emotional challenges of hearing that you have cancer is a challenge, but in addition to this, you must learn how to cope with the physical issues that cancer causes. Many of the physical symptoms that you experience will be directly related to the changes that you experience as the cancer divides and multiplies within your body. To Learn MORE about Cancer, please visit: www.MeTheDoctor.com