What is Physical Therapy?

Physical therapy: “the treatment of disease, injury, or deformity by physical methods such as massage, heat treatment, and exercise rather than by drugs or surgery”.

(Oxford dictionary definition)

But what else is about it? (Kid history quote … you’re welcome for your next YouTube binge session)
Physical therapists are movement specialists, therefore, physical therapists are educated to treat conditions that affect the way an individual moves. Some of the most common body systems physical therapists work with include the musculoskeletal (the things that stand the body against gravity and move the body around) system, nervous (electrical wiring of the body) system, cardiopulmonary (blood pumping and oxygen transportation) system, and integumentary (protection from the outside world) system.

The musculoskeletal system involves the bones, muscles, and ligaments. The nervous system involves the brain, spinal cord, and nerves that go out to all the areas of your body. The cardiopulmonary system involves your heart and your lungs. The integumentary system involves your skin and underlying layers.

Physical therapy is meant to help individuals that have pain with movement that negatively impacts their ability to complete tasks throughout the day; it also serves the purpose of decreasing reliance on pain medications (opioids) and ideally decrease the need for surgery from time to time.

AMP tailors it’s services toward the active population that is looking to decrease risk of getting hurt, move faster, get stronger, and feel more stable during more intense and complex levels of activity. That being said, physical therapy can help an individual that can’t bend over to put their shoes on because it hurts, someone that is struggling to be more active for health purposes because of pain, a person that has pain when reaching out or above their head, a child that has pain in his/her legs when playing with friends, an adult that has hip pain when playing in a weekly hockey game, and anyone in between.

Shoulder pain? Knee pain? Back pain? Hip pain? Balance problems? Elbow pain? Neck pain? Headaches? Thigh pain? Wrist pain? Forearm pain? Mid back pain? Dizzy when you roll over? Physical therapy can help!

If you have pain with movement or at rest that is not allowing you to live the life you’d like, let’s do this! Contact AMP today and let’s get you to take control of your muscles and achieve your truest movement-based potential!