Chronic Pain Management: 6 Key Benefits of Physical Therapy

Chronic pain affects millions and comes from multiple complex sources, but most cases have one thing in common — physical therapy helps. Here’s how this tried-and-true, often-underestimated pain management strategy can benefit you.

About 50 million people in the United States struggle with chronic or long-lasting pain. If you’re one of them, you know that chronic pain can be debilitating, affecting your ability to carry out everyday tasks, concentrate, and enjoy life.

Thankfully, plenty of treatment options are available to help you manage your chronic pain, including medication, regenerative medicine, massage therapy, spinal cord stimulation, and acupuncture, to name a few. However, physical therapy is one of the most effective strategies for managing pain and restoring mobility.

At Genesis Pain and Regenerative Medicine in Colleyville, Texas, our pain management team, led by Don Enty, MD, understands how physical therapy can help you curb chronic pain and improve your quality of life.

This blog explores what you can expect during physical therapy and what benefits you can reap from each session.

The purpose of physical therapy

One of the main goals of physical therapy is to find the root source of your pain rather than simply treat the symptoms of your chronic pain.

For example, your back pain could be caused by poor posture or a weak core. Our team can help correct your posture or strengthen your core through a personalized exercise routine to resolve the underlying problem and reduce your pain.

What to expect during physical therapy

Physical therapy uses a wide range of techniques. During your physical therapy sessions, the methods we use depend on the type and location of your pain and how you respond to each method.

Exercise

Specific body movements are essential to most physical therapy sessions, but different people need different movements. For example, you may benefit from low-impact aerobic training such as speed walking, strengthening exercises like squats and push-ups, or gentle stretching.

Movement Helps by:

Increasing flexibility and mobility
Relieving the fear of moving that part of your body
Increasing circulation and oxygen flow to damaged tissues

Physical therapy isn’t a workout — it’s a set of precise movements that target specific muscles, tendons, ligaments, and nerves.

Ultrasound therapy

During ultrasound therapy, ultrasound waves warm up your deep tissues around the painful area to improve circulation and encourage healing.

Electrical stimulation

Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) uses electricity to decrease pain signals your body sends to your brain.

Dry needling

This technique uses tiny needles to pierce muscle tissue and painful muscle knots to alleviate pain.

Heat and ice

Heat and ice packs are simple but effective ways to decrease pain and inflammation and often go hand in hand with other physical therapy treatments.

The advantages of physical therapy for chronic pain

Physical therapy has much to offer in addition to reducing or eliminating your chronic pain. These benefits include:

Restoring function
Increasing mobility
Boosting strength and flexibility
Reducing the need for opioid pain medication
Learning about your specific chronic pain
Improving your quality of life

To learn more about physical therapy or our other pain management options, contact our team to set up an appointment. Call us at 817-482-0188 or use our online booking tool.