If you’re suffering from ongoing chronic neck and/or back problems or just have learned to live with occasional back or neck and shoulder pain, you have probably wondered what’s better for you – chiropractic care or physical therapy. The answer is a combination of both. While each of these have benefits of its own, they achieve a far more significant effect when working together to diagnose, treat, and prevent spine-related issues.
Physiotherapy is a specialized treatment used by some chiropractic physicians in combination with the chiropractic adjustment. It entails all the modalities, exercises, and treatments available to the physical therapist. By combining chiropractic care and physiotherapy, our patients heal quicker and have a significantly lower risk of repeated injury.
Today, we highlight the many healing benefits of undergoing a total spine care treatment program.
What Is Chiropractic Care and When Do You Need It?
Patients with spine-related conditions, especially those affecting the neuromuscular system, are often prescribed chiropractic care. Chiropractic improves spinal function and helps to ease and often eliminate neck muscle pain, back muscle pain, pinched nerves, and neck stiffness.
Chiropractors diagnose and treat strains, sprains, and other physical conditions that can result in severe pain or discomfort, including headaches and migraines.
After identifying the problem, a chiropractor will implement specific "adjustments" or manipulations to the area of concern using a combination of techniques. At its core, chiropractic care centers around these adjustments, which involve a calculated, sudden application of force to a spinal joint. This process is executed either manually by hand, with the use of specialized tables, or with a combination of instruments. The primary goal, of these adjustments is to correct spinal segmental dysfunction in the spine and extremities, known as subluxations, which in turn helps improve spinal mobility and enhance the overall physical functioning of the body.
Along with these adjustments or manipulations, a chiropractor may also recommend physiotherapy modalities including exercises, dietary adjustments, and lifestyle modifications to facilitate comprehensive healing and recovery.
What Does Physiotherapy Involve and Who Is It For?
Like physical therapy, physiotherapy prescribed by a chiropractic physician is used to provide pain relief and help your body restore its normal function. It helps to treat the underlying problem by reducing pain and spasm and improving strength and endurance. This also makes the problem area more immune to future injury or repeated episodes of pain.
Physiotherapy in conjunction with chiropractic care in our opinion is the most effective solution for chronic and recurring back and neck pain, especially in patients who have suffered an injury or have repetitive episodes.
Physiotherapy can help treat many spine-related conditions, ranging from poor posture to shoulder pain or a bulging disc. It is also effective in post-surgical rehabilitation, sports sprains, and more.
In conjunction with chiropractic adjustments, the right type of physiotherapy offers a way to make the damaged area stronger and help alleviate the pain more long-term, thus improving your quality of life by restoring a normal active lifestyle.
One unique aspect of the physiotherapy we use, is its use of specialized exercises as part of the treatment plan. These activities are designed not just to reduce pain but to improve strength, endurance and flexibility which helps prevent future injuries.
While physiotherapy and chiropractic care both address a wide variety of conditions adding specialized focused physiotherapy exercises has proven highly effective in managing chronic and recurrent neck pain and back pain, particularly among individuals who have experienced injuries in the past that have not responded to conventional physical therapy and/or chiropractic treatment.
Physiotherapy helps in treating a range of spine-related issues, from minor concerns like poor posture to more serious conditions. Additionally, we can treat areas other than the spine, such as managing shoulder pain, facilitating post-surgical recovery, treating sports injuries, and more. Its diverse approach in combination with chiropractic ensures a comprehensive route to recovery.
Why Combine Chiropractic Care and Physiotherapy?
These two approaches work in a complementary way to support restorative effects in the long-term.
The journey to healing begins with detailed diagnostics. Once the problem has been identified, integrating both chiropractic care and physiotherapy fosters a more comprehensive and holistic approach to treatment.
The benefits of combining chiropractic care and physiotherapy surpass those of a single specialized type of care. The patients we see who receive both types of treatments simultaneously experience the best of both worlds with quicker and more lasting results.
The following are just some of the benefits you can expect:
- Faster pain relief – Chiropractic care helps restore spinal joint function to reduce pain and dysfunction, while physiotherapy strengthens muscles and joints and helps to improve proper movement patterns.
- Greater mobility and pain free movement –When there is pain with movement the body will change the way it moves to reduce the pain and will develop improper movement patterns which perpetuate the cycle of pain. By addressing these improper movement patterns we are able to take full advantage of specific rehabilitation exercises which helps to achieve a wider range of pain free movement in a shorter period.
- Increased strength and endurance –The combined approach is critical for building strong support for your spine and a stronger healthier body.
- Quicker recovery – Complex and persistent conditions are easier to solve with a unified approach that ensures the right combination of treatments and continuous healing.
Combining chiropractic care and physiotherapy does not just benefit athletes and people recovering from injury but is extremely effective for those who have suffered from pain and dysfunction for years. Nobody should suffer pain and limits to the normal activities they love when there is a solution that can help deliver faster, better and more long-term results.
How Our Approach at The Center for Total Back Care Provides Holistic Healing
The spine is a complex structure, so injury or muscle weakness in one area can cause stress in another, resulting in dysfunction at different levels. Every spine-related condition is unique and should be treated with the right combination of techniques.
The blended approach of chiropractic care and physiotherapy helps us expand the range of available techniques and create personalized treatments for our patients.
As suggested in the name, at The Center for Total Back Care will look at your condition from many different angles and use a combination of rehabilitation exercises, physiotherapy, and chiropractic adjustment to help heal your neck, back and body holistically.
We don’t want our patients to keep returning for pain relief or just to learn to live with the pain. Our goal is to help you get better quicker and give you the tools you need to maintain your strength and recovery long-term.