Joint pain. Stiffness in your joints. Difficulty walking or playing with your grandkids. These are just some of the effects arthritis can commonly have.
For the more than 54 million Americans who have arthritis, physical therapy can be an excellent option. Using physical therapy to treat arthritis might not be a new suggestion for you. Physical therapy has been a respected treatment option for decades, and it’s known for helping joint pain and stiffness.
You may have resisted trying this treatment option because the idea of putting yourself through painful exercises is not an appealing one. Yet physical therapists can make those moves much less grueling than you might think. Physical therapy is not meant to be painful. More importantly, three types of physical therapy for arthritis pain exist that you may not even be aware of.
- Learning new ways to get around
Occupational therapy is a type of physical therapy that has several applications for arthritis patients with pain. For example, your physical therapist can use it to help you find new ways to accomplish your daily tasks without pain. In addition, these specialists can identify body positions, along with non-ergonomic work setups, that contribute to pain.
Your therapist can also help you find ingenious workarounds for many of the moves that increase aching in joints that you might never have guessed. Some of these workarounds include better ways to:
- Go up and down the stairs
- Empty the dishwasher
- Hold and play with your grandchildren
- Grab objects without bending over
- Helping you find ways to lose weight
Physical therapists can help patients figure out how to manage and lose weight, which is a key goal of physical therapy for arthritis pain. There are many people who are carrying around a few extra pounds. In fact, it’s estimated that 39 million of the adults with arthritis are also overweight.
Losing some of this extra weight can greatly benefit patients with arthritis. Even just a small decrease in weight can have huge effects since 1 pound of extra weight equates to 4 pounds of added pressure on your joints. This means that losing just 5 pounds could reduce the pressure on your joints by about 20 pounds.
- Revealing helpful exercises
What you may think of as “traditional” physical therapy can also do a world of good for arthritis pain. Gentle exercises, which you can also do at home, can help you limber up your stiffened joints and muscles. Research has shown that physical therapy exercises helped hip osteoarthritis patients reduce their pain by more than 30%.
Such exercises can also help to:
- Strengthen surrounding muscles for better joint support
- Increase joint range of motion
- Improve your ability to do normal daily tasks
Excel Sports & Physical Therapy offers treatment for arthritis pain
Looking for effective physical therapy for arthritis pain? Our team at Excel Sports & Physical Therapy is ready and willing to help you. We offer free screenings designed to reveal how arthritis is affecting you and what type of arthritis you’re dealing with. Our team can use this data to build you an individualized therapy plan, which can help reduce your pain and stiffness. We’re even currently offering at-home therapy and virtual care services to help you get therapy from home.
Contact our team today for more information about our arthritis therapy services or to schedule your initial appointment.
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