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New York, NY
Rehabilitation / Physical Therapy
11/13/2019
5 Ways to Relieve Adult Scoliosis Without Surgery – Our Guide
Scoliosis
Scoliosis is a condition in which the spine curves to the side, creating a C- or S-shaped back posture. It can appear at any age, but it usually manifests during growth spurts in children. Common symptoms include pain, respiratory problems, and limited physical capacity. There are different treatment options available, such as bracing, physical therapy, or even surgery. In most cases, though, the spine can correct itself with growth.
Adult scoliosis, however, is a very different matter. Older people who develop symptoms often feel neglected and blamed for not addressing their condition when they younger. However, it is crucial to understand that scoliosis is usually idiopathic, meaning the cause is not known. Interestingly, more adults are struggling with scoliosis than children. Their cases are merely ignored and shelved away until the symptoms progress to other more severe spine problems in later stages.
If you are battling this painful condition, there are ways to relieve its symptoms and improve your posture without having to undergo surgery. Here are five ways you can correct your spine:
1. Physical Therapy
For milder cases, exercise and physical rehabilitation techniques help to reduce pain. The exercises during the sessions are targetted to strengthen your back and core muscles so that your spine gets better support. These physical activities should be done under the supervision of your chiropractor or doctor. After a full exam, they will draft a rehabilitation program tailored to your strengths and weaknesses to help improve your symptoms.
2. Whole-Body Vibration Therapy
For patients who have more severe curves, their pain could get excruciating whenever they exert too much physical effort. Whole-body vibration therapy is an excellent alternative for such cases. Vibration boards are short balance beams with a motor at the bottom. The speed is adjustable based on how fast or slow a patient can tolerate. Standing on this for as little as 10 to 12 minutes a day will do wonders in strengthening one’s bones and muscles.
3. Massage Therapy
Aside from its relaxation benefits, massage therapy has numerous benefits for adults suffering from chronic back pain. While it won’t cure scoliosis, it provides pain relief and restores balance to the muscles. It works as an additional treatment, often done before or after chiropractic sessions.
4. Chiropractic Therapy
Chiropractors specialize in working with the spine, muscles, and connective tissues. Comprehensive chiropractic care is a holistic approach that includes spinal adjustment, stretching, and nerve stimulation. Beyond that, it also focuses on lifestyle and nutritional counseling. Chiropractic therapy has been known to drastically improve chronic back pain, headaches, and joint mobility. For those with scoliosis, these are the same symptoms they often experience.
5. Nutritional Support
Aside from muscle strengthening and spinal adjustments, the symptoms associated with scoliosis significantly improve when a patient makes a complete dietary turnaround. Nutritious food helps to address some of scoliosis’ underlying causes. Increase your intake of foods rich in calcium, Vitamin D, fish oil, and magnesium. Anti-inflammatories such as turmeric, curcumin, and green tea are also proven to be beneficial. On top of your daily food intake, your chiropractor will also recommend some nutritional supplements in the form of capsules.
While having scoliosis is a painful and uncomfortable condition, there are ways to manage it so that you can still perform normal physical functions. These therapies are not quick fixes, but over time, they will relieve your symptoms and improve your quality of life.
If you’re looking for a physical therapist in NYC to help you relieve pain and correct your posture, get in touch with us to see how we can help.
10/29/2019
Why You Should See a Physical Therapist When You’re Not Injured
You probably haven’t considered going to a physical therapist unless needed. Many physical therapy patients are those with injuries. However, it does not necessarily mean that you can’t see a physical therapist when you are not injured. You can visit a physical therapy clinic to maintain or improve your physical condition, including posture and overall body awareness. Here are some reasons why you should visit a physical therapist even without an injury:
1. Injury prevention
There is an increasing emphasis on physical activities in recent years so you can still do many things even when you’re older. However, engaging in recreational sports and endurance exercise may be dangerous for people at an older age because they are prone to degenerative injuries. Visiting a physical therapist will help prevent such injuries.
Getting evaluated can reveal underlying issues, most of which you may not know about, or you feel off, but you can pinpoint. These include muscle imbalance, extreme tightness, or compromised range of motion.
A physical therapist can evaluate your body to identify where you are vulnerable to injuries. Among the things they will check are muscle strength, range of motion, flexibility, function, ligaments laxity, and body mechanics. Physical therapists can recommend a plan on how you can strengthen any vulnerable areas and protect them from injuries.
2. Peace of mind
Therapeutic exercises strengthen your muscles all over and decrease the chances of injury. Knowing that you are less vulnerable to an injury can ease your mind, removing your fear and skepticism about going throughout your workouts. It helps you pursue a balanced workout strategy.
3. Guided exercises
You will learn helpful new exercises in physical therapy. These guided exercises will help improve your body’s mobility. Even after your physical therapy sessions, you can still use the exercises to enhance your fitness and increase your range of motion.
If you’re also thinking about starting a new activity, such as a new sport or training, a physical therapist can help you do it safely. Guided exercise routines ensure that you are doing what’s best for your body.
4. Money and time
You can save money on investigative X-ray, MRI, or CT scan because physical therapists can identify the issues you have with a joint or muscle. Healthcare can be expensive so that you can save time and money supposedly spent on the tests.
5. Motivation
Physical therapy can help you lose weight, eat healthier, and be more careful with your lifestyle. With the changes in your body image, you can feel better about yourself. You become more motivated to do things with passion.
Even when you are not injured, you can still have physical therapy to improve your body’s condition and lifestyle. Physical therapists help you identify issues with your body and provide recommendations on how you can strengthen the areas vulnerable to injuries.
If you are looking for a physical therapist in NYC to help you stay in optimal shape, get in touch with Launchfit today!
05/15/2018
Sports Injuries: Treatment and Recovery with Chiro and Physical Therapy
Recovery with Chiro and Physical Therapy
Whether it’s recreational or professional sports, the possibility of sustaining injuries while playing is always present. Though contact sports like football and basketball increase the chance of getting injured, swimmers, cyclists, and golfers also have their fair share of sports injuries.
First aid is very important to keeping the pain in check and preventing further damage to the affected area. Serious injuries may need
more than just an ice pack. Some may need regular rehab sessions to bring back peak performance while the worst injuries may call for surgery.
The most common sports injuries among professionals are pulled muscles, runner’s knee, shoulder impingement, shin splints, tennis elbow, ankle sprain, and Achilles tendonitis. Though these
rarely require evasive treatment, most may require physical therapy and chiropractic intervention for treatment and recovery.
Treatment will start with questions about your medical history, a physical exam, and other tests relevant to your injury. Thorough evaluation and a correct diagnosis of the injury will also result in providing the right treatment plan.
A chiropractor will check your posture, balance, and spine. A chiropractor will help you relieve tension in your body with manual adjustments to your spine and joints. Faster recovery, improved balance, and better performance can be achieved with regular visits.
Physical therapy will provide targeted exercises to relieve pain and reduce inflammation, after which a reconditioning treatment plan will help improve range of motion, flexibility, strength, and balance. Committing to the physical therapy and rehab can get you back to your game faster and safer.
Yes, enjoying your favorite sport is a great way to keep fit and healthy. However, there are a couple of tips that you should always remember: make sure that you warm up and cool down properly, and don’t overdo yourself and listen to your body.
09/28/2017
All About Patellar Tendonitis
Knee Pain:
The knee is one of the most vital tendon systems of our body. For athletes, especially those engaged in team sports, the health and well-being of their knee is so important. Their careers are dependent on how long their knees stay injury-free.
In sports, like volleyball and basketball which involve a lot of jumping, the knees are exposed to a myriad of injuries. One of them is patellar tendonitis, commonly known as jumper’s knee.
As its name suggests, jumper’s knee comes from “jumping”. Basketball and volleyball athletes are at risk of suffering from patellar tendonitis. When players dash and go for fast breaks, leap for rebounds and block spikes, dive for loose balls, the knee is always under duress and stress. As a result of all that activity, the patella tendon below the knee cap develops patella tendonitis.
The following are some of the symptoms that you are suffering from jumper’s knee or patellar tendonitis:
1. Gradual increase of pain in the knee with increase in level of activity
2. Patella Tendon feels tender
3. Stiffness in the tendon during morning
4. Pain gets worse whenever you jump, land, run
Jumper’s knee/patellar tendonitis can go beyond just knee pain. Additional stress on the tendon will do further damage and might lead to the whole knee being damaged for life. Athletes with severe jumper’s knee will not only be able to play at peak levels, and may have to refrain from playing again.
To treat jumper’s knee, we have the following advice:
1. Rest your injured knees and refrain from activities that would cause further stress to it.
2. Apply cold compress to the swelling and then warm compress after the swelling is reduced.
3. Always do warm-ups before any activity. Do these warm-up exercises to increase the strength of your knee.
4. Consult a professional therapist on stretching exercises, those which are specifically for the knees.
Do not let jumper’s knee end your athletic career end early, or make you stop playing the game you always loved. Visit Launchfit™ by Clinicube®and we will teach you how to overcome patellar tendonitis!
03/18/2017
Physical therapy proves as effective as surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome
Physical therapy is as effective as surgery in treating carpal tunnel syndrome, according to a new study published in the Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy® (JOSPT®).
Researchers in Spain and the United States report that one year following treatment, patients with carpal tunnel syndrome who received physical therapy achieved results comparable to outcomes for patients who had surgery for this condition. Further, physical therapy patients saw faster improvements at the one-month mark than did patients treated surgically.
Carpal tunnel syndrome causes pain, numbness, and weakness in the wrist and hand. Nearly half of all work-related injuries are linked to this syndrome, which can result from repetitive movements. Although surgery may be considered when the symptoms are severe, more than a third of patients do not return to work within eight weeks after an operation for carpal tunnel syndrome.
The study demonstrates that physical therapy – and particularly a combination of manual therapy of the neck and median nerve and stretching exercises – may be preferable to surgery, certainly as a starting point for treatment.
“Conservative treatment may be an intervention option for patients with carpal tunnel syndrome as a first line of management prior to or instead of surgery,” says lead author César Fernández de las Peñas, PT, PhD, DMSc, with the Department of Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, Rehabilitation, and Physical Medicine at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Alcorcón, Spain.
Dr. de las Peñas and his fellow researchers studied the cases of 100 women with carpal tunnel syndrome. By random allocation, 50 women were treated with physical therapy and 50 with surgery. Patients assigned to the physical therapy group were treated with manual therapy techniques that focused on the neck and median nerve for 30 minutes, once a week, with stretching exercises at home.
After one month, the patients in the physical therapy group had better hand function during daily activities and better grip strength (also known as pinch strength between the thumb and index finger) than the patients who had surgery. At three, six, and 12 months following treatment, patients in the surgery group were no better than those in the physical therapy group. Both groups showed similar improvements in function and grip strength. Pain also decreased similarly for patients in both groups. The researchers conclude that physical therapy and surgery for carpal tunnel syndrome yield similar benefits one year after treatment. No improvements in cervical range of motion were observed in either patient group.
The researchers caution that because the study only included women from a single hospital, additional research needs to be done to generalize their findings. Further, there are no available data on the most effective dosage for the manual therapy protocol applied.
The study was funded by a research project grant (FIS PI14/ 00364) from the Health Institute Carlos III (PN I+D+I 2014-2017; Spanish Government).
Article: The Effectiveness of Manual Therapy Versus Surgery on Self-reported Function, Cervical Range of Motion, and Pinch Grip Force in Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: A Randomized Clinical Trial, César Fernández-de-las-Peñas, PT, PhD, DMSc, Joshua Cleland, PT, PhD, OCS, FAAOMPT, María Palacios-Ceña, PT, Stella Fuensalida-Novo, PT, Juan A. Pareja, MD, PhD, Cristina Alonso-Blanco, PT, PhD, Journal of Orthopaedic & Sports Physical Therapy, doi: 10.2519/jospt.2017.7090, published March 2017.