The joints in your body are responsible for allowing you to move and function. They assist your muscles and bones in bending, rotating, and moving normally. However, over time with constant use, your joints can begin to feel stiff or even painful. The good news is that you can improve the health of your joints and increase flexibility and range of motion with physical therapy.
Why causes joint pain or stiffness?
In order to understand how physical therapy can help your joints, you first need to understand what causes joint pain and stiffness. These symptoms can occur for a variety of reasons. You could acutely injure the joint itself, or pain and stiffness could slowly develop over time without an injury to trigger it. If you have a particularly physical job or are an athlete, you’re more likely to experience joint pain or stiffness. However, the most common cause of these joint symptoms is osteoarthritis. This condition is an age-related deterioration of the cartilage surrounding the bones of a joint.
Different Kinds of PT for Different Kinds of Joint Pain
There are different physical therapy methods that your therapist can choose from when treating your joint pain. First, they’ll thoroughly examine the joint’s condition in question. Then, they’ll develop an individualized custom treatment plan geared to increase your joint flexibility, range of motion, and ultimately decrease your pain. The plan can be adjusted as you go, considering your progress and improvement as you strengthen your joints.
Is Physical Therapy Beneficial for All Joints
All of the joints in your body can be treated with physical therapy. This includes shoulders, ankles, knees, elbows, wrists, hips, and SI joints. Physical therapists are essentially joint experts and can help you improve your quality of life by decreasing your pain, increasing your mobility, and getting you back to your daily activities.
Ready to start physical therapy for your joint pain? Call Activity First PT today.