The Role of Physical Medicine in Pain Management

The Role of Physical Medicine in Pain Management

Pain can happen suddenly or appear as the long-term result of bigger health issues. Either way, people can find various health-care solutions. Not everyone wants to use medications or extensive surgery to relieve the pain they experience.

Luckily, if you prefer to avoid surgeries and medicines in your pursuit of pain relief, you can meet that preference. Physical medicine is a process worth exploring if you want minimally invasive procedures that provide maximum pain relief. That said, you should learn what this process includes before scheduling an appointment. If you want to learn more, keep reading to uncover the role of physical medicine in pain management today.

What Is Physical Medicine?

The phrase physical medicine may suggest that the process pertains only to your physical conditions, but it’s not that simple. Pain affects everyone physically and emotionally, so physical medicine works by taking your entire body into account, even if the pain is in only one area. Talk with your doctor about how the pain you feel is increasing your stress and other emotions. Then, they will explore the physical medicine opportunities available to suit you.

Physical medicine aims to improve quality of life through carefully curated hands-on treatments, such as chiropractic care. The purpose of this process is to find pain relief solutions without requiring medication or surgeries. If you want a relatively convenient and comfortable procedure for pain relief, you can find options today. For example, Anodyne currently offers physical medicine and rehabilitation in Las Vegas that includes chiropractic care, physical therapy, pain injections, and more.

Addressing Specific Symptoms

So how do you know if physical medicine is right for the symptoms you’re experiencing? Some of the main problems that the treatment can help with include pain or inflammation of muscles and joints. In some cases, the need for physical medicine can stem from a sudden accident that results in injury.

However, you can also treat your chronic pain using physical medicine, so this process can be a long-term health-care solution. This is among the various reasons why professional physical therapists and chiropractors provide their expertise to the physical medicine industry.

Next, we will look at more specific examples of physical medicine options available right now.

Physical Therapy

One of the most common roles of physical medicine in pain management is to create physical therapy treatments. Physical therapy involves using exercise, massage, and other similar processes to improve mobility and reduce pain. Your physical therapist has to talk to you about your specific condition before treating it, so consider how your pain affects you every day.

Personalized Therapy Sessions

Providing all the essential details helps physical therapists fine-tune their plans for each patient. For instance, exercise includes a vast range of physical activities. Your physical therapist won’t ask you to try every exercise available, though. Instead, they’ll use their experience and additional research to find an exercise that most precisely addresses your issue.

As you monitor your progress over time, the exercises you do or the massages you receive can improve your ability to perform daily tasks. Plus, pain and inflammation can affect a patient’s mood. By addressing mobility restrictions, you will also work on lowering the amount of stress you deal with. This is a key reason why it’s crucial to find a health-care professional who you trust and can collaborate with to find a great plan for you.

Chiropractic Care

Another form of physical medicine you can explore for pain management is chiropractic care. The primary focus of chiropractic care is your spine, so you will often see chiropractors associated with back injuries and inflammation. However, the impact of chiropractic services is a bit broader than that. For example, are you experiencing neck pain? If so, adjusting the spine may help soothe your discomfort. Do you experience frequent headaches? Assessing and assisting your spine may be the key to relieving those headaches so that you can live more comfortably.

After all, pain management isn’t just about the physical effects; it also involves the emotional effects. Reducing frequent headaches, arthritic joint pain, and other issues related to the spine can help you feel more focused and energized every day. That said, remember that one trait chiropractic care and physical therapy share is the personalized approach. Talk with your chiropractic service provider about your symptoms and the goal you want to achieve through therapy, physically and emotionally. That way, you can talk about how to focus on both aspects of your health through hands-on health-care procedures.

Chiropractic Techniques

Now that you know more about the goal of chiropractic services, we can focus on how these techniques help you achieve better pain management. A chiropractor will help you align your spine, making adjustments that can reduce your pain. They can achieve this with hands-on spinal manipulation or tools.

One example of this is Graston therapy, which uses stainless steel instruments to target issues such as scar tissue. Another example is E-stim technology. An e-stim session involves mild electrical currents that will help with pain reduction when applied to the target area. You can talk with your chiropractor to learn more about the options available so that you can discuss how they will impact your current health status.

Pain Injections

One more way to showcase the diverse options available in physical medicine is to look at platelet-rich plasma (PRP) injections. These injections help pain management by providing a direct injection to the target area. An injection may seem like a surprising addition to this list since physical medicine is typically an alternative to invasive surgeries or medications. However, these injections don’t include any mysterious serums, nor are they very invasive.

A PRP injection has its name because it contains plasma from the patient’s blood. Your health-care professional will take the PRP from one area of your body and inject it into the problematic area for easy pain reduction.

If you’re interested in exploring physical medicine and rehabilitation for your pain management, talk with an expert about which of the options above, or another solution, is right for you.

The Role of Physical Medicine in Pain Management