Physical Therapist

If you’re recovering from an injury or dealing with chronic pain, your family physician may have referred you to a physical therapist. These healthcare professionals perform non-invasive treatments to reduce your pain, increase your function and restore mobility. Here are some tips to get the most out of your physical therapy sessions.

Go to All of Your Physical Therapy Sessions

This might sound like a no-brainer, but some people stop attending their physical therapy sessions if they don’t see results quickly enough. It is important to understand that it often takes time to notice results. If you don’t notice a difference after a couple of sessions, don’t give up. Continue to attend all of your physical therapy appointments and you may see results in no time.

Do Your Assigned Exercises

If you want to achieve maximum results, it is not enough to just go to your physical therapy appointments. Your physical therapist will also assign you various strengthening exercises to perform at home. Although doing these exercises might be tedious at times, they are critical for your recovery. If you perform these exercises regularly at home, you may see results faster.

Be Honest with Your Physical Therapist

When it comes to communicating with your physical therapist, honesty is the best policy. Your physical therapist can’t help you if he or she does not know the truth. For example, if you have been experiencing pain when performing exercises at home, you should let your physical therapist know right away. He or she may be able to come up with an appropriate solution.

Set Goals

It is a good idea to set goals in many aspects of your life, including your physical therapy  sessions. For example, you might want to recover from your injury and get back to playing your sport or just go on a walk without feeling pain. If you have specific goals in mind, you will be more motivated to stick to your physical therapy sessions.

Ask Questions

There is no such thing as asking your physical therapist too many questions. In fact, your physical therapist will likely encourage you to ask questions. For instance, if you’re not sure why you’re performing a specific exercise, bring up your concern to your therapist.

Schedule an appointment with a physical therapist, like one from Mid Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic, today.

Physical Therapist

If you are undergoing surgery soon, whether it is a knee replacement or back surgery, you may want to consider going to physical therapy sessions afterward. Going under the knife is a big deal and the recovery process can be long. Although surgery can improve your condition, it can also leave you weak and less mobile.

Here are a few reasons why you should attend physical therapy after surgery.

Alleviate Pain

It is not uncommon for people to experience pain right after they have surgery. The muscles around the surgical site tense up, which can cause you discomfort. This is one of the biggest reasons why you should go to physical therapy. During your sessions, a therapist will use various non-invasive methods, such as joint mobilization, heat and ice and exercise, to remove pressure from your muscles and joints, which will ultimately relieve your pain.

Improve Mobility

Surgery can be very hard on the body and may make you less mobile immediately afterward. You may have trouble walking around and need assistance with basic tasks. If you wish to improve your mobility, consider going to physical therapy. Your therapist can show you various exercises to help strengthen the affected area and improve your range of motion.

Prevent Scar Tissue

After surgery, the body will naturally produce scar tissue to close the wound. However, if you have too much scar tissue, it can restrict your movements and cause discomfort. That is another reason to consider physical therapy after undergoing a surgical procedure. A physical therapist may perform a massage and ultrasound therapy to soften scar tissue and speed up the healing process.

Boost Circulation

Blood transports nutrients and oxygen to the affected area, which reduces inflammation and speeds up the healing process. Physical therapy can actually improve blood circulation throughout your body, helping you recover quicker. For instance, your physical therapist may perform electrical stimulation to increase muscle contractions and blood flow.

Prevent Secondary Issues

All surgeries come with risks, such as blood clots and infection. One way to reduce your likelihood of these complications is to attend physical therapy. Your physical therapist can have you perform certain exercises to prevent secondary issues.

If you wish to attend physical therapy, you may want to schedule an appointment with a physical therapist, like Mid Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic, to discuss your goals. 

Your First Physical Therapy Appointment

If you suffer from an acute or chronic medical condition that could benefit from Bowie, MD physical therapy sessions, connect with Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic today to learn about our physical therapy services. We may be able to help you to improve your quality of life, speed your recovery, manage your pain, and otherwise promote your well-being in ways that are sustainable.

Physical therapy is a broad medical discipline. Patients seek out physical therapy services for all kinds of reasons. Commonly, individuals who have suffered an injury as a result of trauma, who are trying to rebound from a challenging surgical procedure, who are attempting to manage a chronic health condition more effectively, and those who are trying to deal with pain in ways that allow them to either avoid or minimize their usage of the medication seek out the services of physical therapists at Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic.

Assessing Your Needs

While you are mentally preparing to attend your first physical therapy appointment, take a few moments to think about what it is like to meet with a doctor for the first time. Just as you do not expect that a doctor will know how to treat your symptoms until you tell them what those symptoms are, when they began, what makes them worse, if anything makes them better, and what you hope to achieve by seeking medical assistance at this time, so do our providers need to benefit from explanations of this kind.

Without access to detailed information about your situation, your goals for physical therapy, and whether you hope to achieve those goals on any specific timeline, we cannot effectively create a physical therapy treatment plan that will meet your needs. Similarly, we will need to evaluate you physically to some degree. For example, if you are seeking physical therapy services primarily because you suffer from hip pain, we will need to see your range of motion, how your hip functions in various ways, and whether your gait has anything to do with your pain.

Once we have thoroughly assessed your circumstances, the Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic team will provide you with our recommendations for your treatment. You will be encouraged to ask any questions that you might have and to voice any concerns that you might have. Physical therapy is not a set of directions to follow. It is a partnership between patient and provider.

Setting Expectations: Physical Therapy

If you could benefit from seeking Baltimore, MD physical therapy services, connect with the dedicated team at Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic today to schedule an initial consultation. The consultation process will allow you to tell us your story and to explain what you hope to achieve by attending physical therapy services. It will also allow you to understand how we may be able to help you and what you may be able to expect from the process of physical therapy over time.

Expectations: What the Physical Therapy Process Entails

One of the reasons why it is so important she set expectations at the beginning of the physical therapy process is so that you do not get discouraged when you hit bumps along the road ahead. Many people approach the process of physical therapy with the expectation that they will attend their sessions, do their homework exercises, and all their goals will be achieved according to the timeline they have developed in their minds as ideal. In reality, physical therapy is like any other kind of therapy. Sometimes, patients improve at a rate that is unexpected. Sometimes, challenges arise and improvement occurs more slowly than expected. Understanding that physical therapy is a process and is not something that can be approached with absolute certainty as to outcome can help to keep your mind open and flexible as you seek to achieve the most favorable outcomes possible under the circumstances.

What the physical therapy process will entail for you will depend upon the kinds of physical challenges that you are facing, your unique goals for this process, and the kinds of physical therapy that you are willing to try. For example, we may recommend that you use a piece of equipment known as a Pilates reformer to strengthen certain areas of the body. If you do not like the reformer and need us to take a different approach, we will do our best to accommodate that preference. Know that whatever approach we take, you can expect that you will need to work on certain aspects of your recovery at home because you can only achieve a certain level of results if you only work when you are at Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic.

Expectations: Goals and Timeline

It is important to set goals within a short-term range, medium-term range, and long-term range prior to commencing your physical therapy treatment plan. Keeping these different goals in mind will help to ensure that you can remain focused and resilient during your physical therapy journey. We will revisit these goals and adjust them if necessary or appropriate. Because physical therapy is a process comma there is a certain amount of fluidity and flexibility required on behalf of both a provider and patient in order to achieve the most favorable result possible under the circumstances. To learn more about our approach to physical therapy treatment specifically and patient care generally, connect with Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic today. We look forward to speaking with you.

Your First Chiropractic Appointment

If you are thinking about seeking medical care from a PG County, MD chiropractor at Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic, it is important to familiarize yourself with what to expect at your first chiropractic visit. Why? Setting expectations will help to ensure that you don’t encounter any surprises and that you don’t leave your visit with any lingering questions or concerns left unvoiced. We want to make sure that your time spent at our practice is spent in ways that impact you positively. Understanding what to expect when you walk through our doors will help to achieve that critically important goal.  

Assessing Your Situation

Just as you would expect a doctor to ask you questions about your condition in the event that you were sick, expect that our providers will ask you questions about your condition given that you are in need of chiropractic care. We will likely start by taking a patient history that focuses on any illnesses, injuries, or other circumstances that have contributed to your need for chiropractic treatment. For example, we will likely ask you about the severity of your pain, how often the pain occurs, what contributes to your pain, what alleviates your pain, and when your pain started.

Next, we will likely proceed to a physical exam that will allow us to assess your range of motion, any limitations that your condition has manifested, and the functionality of the areas of your body that are being affected by the condition you seek to treat.

Depending upon the kinds of tests and images taken by other providers prior to your first chiropractic visit, we may need to engage in some diagnostic testing or imaging in order to get a better sense of exactly what is going on with you and how we can help.

Setting Goals and Creating a Treatment Plan

The experienced team at Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic takes great pride in ensuring that all of our chiropractic treatment plans are personalized according to our individual patient’s needs. As a result of this philosophy, we will spend time with you constructing a treatment plan and a timeline for how that treatment plan will be executed. Laying this information out at the beginning of your chiropractic care process helps to set expectations and to facilitate reaching your goals. If and when any element of your treatment plan or any aspect of our proposed timeline needs to be adjusted, we will make necessary changes and will alert you to those changes if you have not been the one to request them specifically.

Starting Your Care

Depending upon how long it has taken us to work through the process of taking your patient history, assessing your needs, and creating an initial treatment plan, we may or may not have time to provide you with medical therapy at your first appointment. If not, we’ll dive right in when you return to Mid-Atlantic Spinal Rehab & Chiropractic for your next session.