Category: Therapy

How Physiotherapy Can Help Injury Healing

There is no doubt that the human body can be resilient. The body is capable of recovering from amazing amounts of damage, including broken bones. Perhaps because of this, many people feel that physiotherapy treatment can only speed up recovery and if they are not elite athletes then simply letting nature take its course is the best, and most cost-effective choice for them.

 

Speed of recovery, however, is only one very small measure of physiotherapy success and fails to fully represent how important proper treatment is. Here are a few things about injury healing you may not have been aware of.

 

  1. Scar Tissue is more likely to form without treatment. 

Scar tissue can cause ongoing pain and stiffness in skin, muscles and ligaments. Physiotherapy can prevent excess scarring through advice regarding movement, massage and other hands-on treatment.

 

  1. Your ability to sense the position of your body, known as proprioception, is often damaged after an injury and can be retrained. 

Impaired proprioception is a major factor in reinjury. If you’ve ever heard someone say “my knee/ankle/shoulder still doesn’t feel 100%” then this could be why. Physiotherapy treatment will aim to restore proprioception as a part of standard rehabilitation.

 

  1. Once healing has finished, your body may not be quite the same as before. 

Injured ligaments may be weaker, torn muscles and joints may be stiffer and tighter. While the original pain may resolve, there may still be some residual issues that need to be addressed to prevent reinjury.

 

  1. You may have picked up some bad habits while waiting for the injury to heal. 

While in pain, we often change the way we do things, which can lead to the development of poor movement patterns and muscle imbalances. Even though the pain has gone, these new patterns can persist and create further problems down the road.

 

  1. Injuries don’t always heal completely.

On rare occasions, circumstances may prevent an injury from healing fully. The most serious example of this would be a fracture that cannot heal if the bone is not kept still enough. Other factors that may prevent an injury from healing include poor circulation, diabetes, insufficient care of the injury and poor nutrition.

 

Your physiotherapist can assess your injury and develop a treatment plan that will both restore you to the best possible function and prevent further injuries. 

Focus on : Ankle pain

Ankle pain is caused by either Tendinitis, Tendinosis or Achilles Tendon Tears.

Let’s look at Achilles tendon tears :

 

What is it?

 

The Achilles tendon is a band of fibrous tissue located at the back of the ankle. Its main role is to connect the calf muscles to the heel of the foot. This tendon is the largest tendon in the body and when it tightens, as the calf muscles contract, it pulls the heel allowing you to stand on tiptoe or to point your foot.

Achilles tendon tears commonly occur in athletes, however, this injury can affect anyone and surprisingly, a complete tear is actually more common than a partial tear.

These tears are commonly located at the part of the tendon where there is poor blood flow approximately 6cm above its attachment to the heel. Since there is poor blood supply, this part of the tendon is both vulnerable to injury and slow to heal.

 

What are the Symptoms?

 

Primarily, an Achilles tendon tear will cause difficulty in activities such as walking, running and jumping. Other signs and symptoms of an Achilles tendon tear include:

  • A loud pop or snap is heard
  • Sudden and severe pain at the back of the calf or ankle
  • Feeling of having been kicked in the calf
  • There is a gap between the tendon and the heel (about 2 inches above the heel)
  • Swelling and stiffness followed by weakness and bruising
  • Difficulty walking particularly during push off
  • Standing on tiptoe may be impossible

 

 What Causes It?

 

 Anyone can tear their Achilles tendon if the tendon is subject to excessive force or overstretching, however there are some factors that can increase your risk of injury. The most common activities that cause this injury are running and jumping.

 The Achilles tendon can thin and weaken both as we age and also if it is not used. As a result of this weakening, it becomes prone to injury like tear or rupture with less force or stretching required before an injury occurs. A tear of the Achilles is often observed in people with pre-existing Achilles tendinitis. Other factors such as certain medications including antibiotics and steroids and some illnesses like diabetes and arthritis can also result in weakness of the tendon, increasing injury risk. Being obese is also a risk factor as excess weight puts additional strain on the tendon.

 

How Can Physiotherapy Help?

 

Treatment for Achilles tendon tear will depend on the patient’s age, how severe the injury is and the patient’s activity level. For young people especially athletes, they opt to have surgery while older people choose conservative treatments including physiotherapy.

Physiotherapy treatment for an Achilles tendon tear will involve exercises to strengthen the calf muscles and the Achilles tendon and exercises for stability. Many people are able to return to their normal activities within 4 to 6 months. Functional rehabilitation is also part of the program as it focuses on how you coordinate your body and how to move it. The aim of functional rehabilitation is to help you return to your highest level of performance.

None of the information in this newsletter is a replacement for proper medical advice. Always see a medical professional for advice on your individual injury.

Please click here or call Addlife Physio on 0424429976 to book your initial consultation appointment

 

 

Physio Kalgoorlie

When Will My Injury Heal?

 

When injury strikes, the first thing that most of us want to know is ‘how long will this take to heal?’ Unfortunately, the answer to this can be complicated and requires at least a little understanding of how the different tissues of the body heal. Each of the tissues of the body, including muscles, tendons, ligaments and bone, heal at different speeds and each individual will have some variation on those times as a result of their individual health history and circumstances.

 

Understanding the type of tissue injured and their different healing times is an important part of how your physiotherapist approaches treatment and setting goals for rehabilitation. On an individual level, a patient’s age, the location and severity of the injury and the way the injury was managed in the first 48 hours all affect the healing times of an injury. Unfortunately, as we age, injuries do tend to heal more slowly than when we are young. Any medical condition that reduces blood flow to an area, such as peripheral vascular disease, can also reduce the body’s ability to heal at its usual rate.

 

There are some guidelines that can be followed when predicting how long an injury will take to heal based on the tissue type affected. Muscles are full of small capillaries, giving them a rich blood supply, and as such, they have a comparatively fast healing time with 2-4 weeks for minor tears. This time will be extended for larger tears and more complicated presentations.

 

Ligaments and tendons have less access to blood supply and tears to these tissues generally take longer to heal. Larger or complete tears of all soft tissues, may not be able to heal themselves and in rare cases, surgery may be required for complete healing to occur. Similarly, cartilage, the flexible connective tissue that lines the surface of joints is avascular, which means it has little or no blood supply. To heal, nutrients are supplied to the cartilage from the joint fluid that surrounds and lubricates the joint.

 

While the different tissues of the body all have different healing times, they do follow a similar process of healing with three main stages, the acute inflammatory phase, the proliferative stage and finally the remodeling stage.

 

The inflammatory stage occurs immediately after an injury and is the body’s primary defense against injury. This stage is identifiable by heat, redness, swelling and pain around the injured area. During this phase the body sends white blood cells to remove damaged tissue and reduce any further damage. This stage usually lasts for 3-5 days.

 

The proliferation stage is the phase where the body starts to produce new cells. Swelling and pain subsides and scar tissue is formed that eventually becomes new tissue. This stage usually occurs around days 7-14 following an injury.

 

The final stage, known as the remodeling stage is when the body completes healing with the reorganization of scar tissue and the laying down of mature tissue. This stage usually occurs roughly two weeks after the initial injury is sustained.

 

At each stage of the healing process a different treatment approach is required and your physiotherapist can help to guide you through your recovery.

Ask your physiotherapist to explain how your injury can be managed best and what to expect in your recovery process.

 

 

 

Myth: Physiotherapy is only for Injuries and Accidents

Physiotherapists do a lot more than just stretch or strengthen weak muscles after an injury or surgery. They are skilled at evaluating and diagnosing potential problems before they lead to more-serious injuries or disabling conditions from carpal tunnel syndrome or a frozen shoulder to chronic headaches or lower-back injuries.

Contact us to find out how.

Customised Physiotherapy Can Ease Lower Back Pain

Customised physiotherapy may be a useful way to ease low back pain, which affects an estimated 31 million Americans a new study says. Researchers from La Trobe University observed that ‘many patients with low-back disorders persisting beyond 6 weeks do not recover.’

Contact us now to make sure this doesn’t happen to you.