Chronic Pain

Chronic Pain Running Your Life?

Occupational and/or Physical Therapy Can Help You Take Control of Your Life Again.

Do you have a chronic condition that’s limiting your ability to live life comfortably? If so, you aren’t alone.

Pain doesn’t always disappear on its own. For some underlying conditions, pain can linger for days, weeks, or even months. Pain is considered chronic when it persists for three months or longer.

If you have been living with pain you can’t seem to shake, don’t hesitate to contact our Decatur, IN l therapy office today. Occupational and Physical therapy in Decatur, IN could be the answer you’ve been searching for.

At Choice Rehabilitation, our advanced methods of individualized treatment can help you find relief as quickly as possible. We’ll get you set up with a treatment plan that will manage your chronic pain to help improve function, daily tasks, and possibly reduce the amount of medication.

Chronic vs acute pain

Chronic pain is a constant discomfort that lasts for 3-6 months or longer. There are several reasons why people may experience chronic pain, and it is the most common reason for seeking medical help.

Acute pain can be defined as pain that goes away on its own in a few hours, days, or weeks. An example of acute pain may be a minor ankle sprain, as the pain will subside shortly within a few days.

It can greatly hinder your quality of life by limiting your mobility, creating a dependence on prescription drugs, or even causing anxiety and depression. However, this can all be avoided with the help of therapy.

Common causes of chronic pain

Chronic injury, illness, anxiety, and feeling depressed are all things that can intertwine in a complicated web and lead your neurological system to always be on high alert.

Chronic pain can appear in the form of back pain, joint pain, nerve pain, or headaches. Most cases of chronic pain stem from a neurophysiological origin. It most commonly occurs due to one of the following causes:

Disease

Certain diseases can lead to chronic pain, including arthritis, fibromyalgia, multiple sclerosis, shingles, neuropathy as a result of diabetes, and more. These kinds of diseases may cause pain that can be alleviated or even eliminated in some cases through occupational and physical therapy treatments in Decatur, IN.

Surgical Operations

Surgical repair of an area of the body is enough to correct a structural problem, but we often compensate in our movement for the pain we experience. Surgical procedures are sometimes unavoidable. While they may be necessary for alleviating certain conditions you are facing, the recovery period can be just as painful.

Weeks, months, or even years of compensatory movement often causes additional pain after surgery if the movement is not corrected. Occupational and physical therapy offers post-surgical rehabilitation services that can help speed up recovery time, relieve pain, and reduce the risk of chronic pain in the future.

Pre-rehab, or “pre-hab” as it has been coined, is also a therapy option that can prove to improve a person’s surgical outcome. Prehab involves seeing an occupational or physical therapist before you ever undergo a surgical procedure. It can enhance recovery results and speed up the recovery process overall.

Overuse Injuries

Occupational or physical therapy can help you learn how to properly move your body in your everyday life, in order to avoid overuse injuries.

Overuse injuries are very common, and they can occur in any part of the body that is used repetitively in your day-to-day life. For example, the way you stand, walk, work, and exercise can all take a toll on your body. It results in overuse injuries if you are not using proper techniques or body mechanics.

This can result in damage to your joints and muscles, thus causing chronic pain. For example, if you perform heavy lifting at work many times a day, with improper techniques, this can lead to chronic back pain.

How occupational and physical therapy can help your chronic pain

It’s easy to think that occupational and physical therapy may be more work than it’s worth, especially if you’ve never heard anything about treatment. However, occupational and physical therapy can often be the difference between a lifetime of pain, and actually having control over your life!

If your condition is posing limitations to your life, our Decatur, IN occupational and physical therapists can assess the best ways to manage those. One of the main goals of occupational and physical therapy is pain relief by discovering the root cause of the pain in order to improve daily function and quality of life, rather than mask symptoms with medication.

At Choice Rehabilitation, we perform physical evaluations to analyze weak areas of the body, focus on places with limited range of motion, and look for any imbalances in gait or posture. All of this helps to identify the underlying causes of your chronic pain.

Once the evaluation is complete, a therapist will create a treatment plan unique to your specific needs. Your treatment plan will incorporate in-clinic treatments, as well as an at-home program to ensure that you are remaining healthy and active at all times.

Treatment plans will likely also include specialized, soothing manual therapy techniques to help restore soft tissue and joint movement, pain-relieving modalities, and gentle targeted exercises to improve your strength.

There’s no reason to fear occupational or physical therapy. You have so much to gain from treatment, so what’s holding you back?

Ready to reclaim your life?

Our physical therapists are highly-trained movement experts who diagnose physical problems and treat underlying structural causes surrounding those problems.

Are you ready to take your life back? If so, request a consultation with Choice Rehabilitation today. We’ll help you beat your chronic pain so you can get back to living life comfortably.