Physical healing may take time, especially for more severe injuries and medical conditions. While some can recover after a few exercise sessions, others require a combination of active and passive treatments.
Luckily, physiotherapists offer aid that can hasten your recovery and even improve your way of life. Besides range of movement (ROM) exercises, they employ other methods, such as therapeutic massages, electrotherapy, cryotherapy, heat therapy, and Kinesio taping.
If you’re planning to get help from these experts, make sure you fully grasp what the treatment entails. It also helps if you know how you regain or improve your body’s optimal movement when you undergo physiotherapy in Dubai.
What Is Physiotherapy?
Physiotherapy is a treatment that seeks to alleviate pain and improve function and movement. Some even say that it has a big role in improving people’s lives.
Even if it is often used interchangeably with physical therapy, physiotherapy has a slightly different approach to patient treatment.
While physical therapists (PTs) use exercise as the primary treatment, physiotherapists (a.k.a. “physios”) combine exercises with passive treatments like massages and stretching.
In some cases, physios employ electrical stimulation for pain relief and improved circulation, as well as other alternative treatments like acupuncture and temperature therapy.
Physios and PTs also often work in different places. While the former are usually employed in hospitals, the latter is often found in outpatient clinics, nursing homes, schools, or cardiac rehabilitation centres.
5 Benefits of Physiotherapy
Each patient who undergoes physiotherapy has a different goal, which can be achieved with various combinations of treatment.
If you must undergo physiotherapy, you need to understand the following five common benefits you can expect from the treatment:
- Pain management
Both physical therapy and physiotherapy are effective in managing pain. In fact, they are considered the better choices for long-term or chronic pain than medicines.
You see, the medical professionals offering these treatments deal not only with the discomfort you’re feeling, but also its source. This results in longer-lasting relief and more permanent pain treatment.
During the initial visit, practitioners look into an injury or condition’s cause and symptoms. They also check any stiff or weak areas that may be contributing to the pain.
Undergoing physiotherapy for pain management also reduces your need for pain killers and drugs like opioids. This not only eases the pain you feel but also lessens the risk of side effects.
- Enhanced strength and coordination
Physiotherapy also helps improve the strength and robustness of your body, helping your movements become more stable after surgery.
This therapy can improve your body’s cumulative coordination using exercises and stretches, which are especially helpful for patients experiencing vertigo or dizziness.
Studies also show that physiotherapy can provide supplementary ADHD treatment in Dubai, particularly for patients with motor problems.
Based on research, 30 to 50 per cent of children with ADHD experience motor issues that make it harder for them to cope with the challenges of daily life.
With physiotherapy, a child with ADHD could gain physical, social, and emotional benefits that significantly improve their quality of life.
- Improved cardiovascular health
Physiology is also an essential part of recovery for patients who had a stroke or heart attack.
After completing a detailed assessment, your physiologist will talk to you about the background of your medical condition and potential treatment methods.
In doing so, the medical practitioner helps you identify aspects of your lifestyle that could be improved, especially those that could affect your cardiovascular health. This is on top of the exercise programs and other therapies they provide for cardiac rehabilitation.
Besides helping patients regain function and movement after a heart attack or stroke, physiotherapy can also slow down or prevent heart disease altogether.
- Injury prevention and management
Often, people only consider seeing a physiotherapist when they’re already in pain and the medicines no longer work. But wouldn’t it be better to prevent injury rather than have it treated?
Whether you have an outgoing or sedentary lifestyle, physiotherapy can help you gain better balance, become more flexible, and boost your endurance, strength, and coordination. This means a lot in terms of injury prevention, especially if you’re an athlete.
Of course, this doesn’t change the fact that physiotherapy also works for managing already-existing injuries. In fact, the treatment can help people of different ages overcome overuse injuries, like the following:
- Golfer’s elbow
- Tennis elbow
- Housemaid’s knee (bursitis)
- Shin splints
- Achilles tendonitis
- Carpal tunnel syndrome
- Management of age-related medical issues
Have you noticed how more issues arise when you get older? Muscles become stiff, joints start to ache, and bones turn brittle.
When this happens, physiotherapy can help you adjust to the age-related changes your body is undergoing.
Physios use different methods and delicate approaches to offer aid to the older adults. Although the primary goal is to help them move better and reduce the risk of injuries, they also interact with these patients more sensitively to help with their emotional well-being.
A Better Life
Physiotherapy offers various benefits for your body and mind. Besides providing a way to regain or improve your flexibility, strength, endurance, and balance, it can also enhance your way of life by ensuring you can cope with limitations you’re experiencing due to injury, medical conditions, and age.