Restore Your Strength and Reduce Your Pain with Physical Therapy
Even minor car accidents can cause serious health concerns. And while many of these conditions are treatable, they can cause you unnecessary pain for months or even years to come if you try to ignore them or wait for them to go away on their own.
If you’re experiencing pain or lack of mobility after a recent car accident — or even a car accident that happened in the past — physical therapy is a powerful tool for accelerating the healing process, restoring your mobility, and strengthening injured areas to reduce your risk of future health concerns.
In this article, we’ll break down five specific benefits of physical therapy for car accident injuries.
5 Ways Physical Therapy Can Help You After a Car Accident
Physical therapy is about much more than just reducing your pain — though that’s certainly an important goal. A great physical therapist has many different tools at their disposal to help you get back to feeling your best, both now and into the future.
Here are five of the benefits you may experience from physical therapy:
- Restoring Range of Motion and Mobility
While a little stiffness may seem normal after a fender-bender, it can actually be a sign of a more serious injury. When the tissue around a joint gets damaged — like with a herniated disc, a tear, or a sprain, you may experience a decreased range of motion in that joint.
Depending on the severity and location of the injury, this lack of mobility can create major problems in your daily life, making it more difficult to do simple tasks like reaching for something in a cabinet, bending over to pick something up, or sitting or standing for long periods of time.
Physical therapy can help restore your mobility so you can use the joint the way it’s meant to be used, without experiencing pain or re-damaging the injured tissue.
- Reducing Pain and Discomfort
When you’re in pain after an accident, it’s only natural to look for the quickest possible source of relief. Often, that means turning to medication.
But while medication can sometimes reduce your pain, it’s only masking your symptoms, not healing them. Plus, medications that worked well for you at first will lose their efficacy over time, so they’re not a useful long-term solution.
If you want to experience true, long-term pain relief, physical therapy is one of the best tools at your disposal.
The exercises you’ll learn in physical therapy may help reduce your pain in the short-term, but they’ll also help your body to heal itself naturally, getting to the root cause of the problem instead of just covering up your symptoms.
- Preventing Long-Term Complications
It’s not uncommon for an untreated injury in one part of the body to cause new problems in other parts. Maybe you have whiplash from a car accident and the tension in your neck leads to chronic migraine.
Or maybe you change your gait because of a herniated disc and as a result start experiencing new pain in your knees and ankles.
Physical therapy can often help you prevent these complications before they even begin. And if complications do arise, your physical therapist can help you make adjustments to relieve your pain and prevent them from getting any worse.
- Restoring Strength and Functionality
If you’ve been injured in a car accident, you’ll probably find yourself resting more and avoiding putting strain on the injured part of your body.
But over time, this can cause your muscles to atrophy and your overall strength to decrease. You may even struggle with things like balance and coordination. And any time your strength is reduced, you’ll be at higher risk for injury from doing your daily activities — from simple chores to lifting heavy objects to even just sitting at your desk for too long.
Physical therapy is a safe and effective way to rebuild your strength so you can get back to your daily life without putting your body in danger of new injuries.
- Psychological and Emotional Benefits
Aside from the physical benefits, physical therapy can also improve your mental and emotional wellbeing.
It provides a safe and healthy way to exercise, which releases endorphins that are good for your mental health. This can also be a healthy way to release stress — which you’re probably experiencing at higher-than-usual levels if you’ve been in a car accident.
Plus, as you see your strength improve and your pain decrease, your confidence and self-esteem will grow.
Try Physical Therapy for Car Accident Pain Relief
If you’ve been injured in an auto accident, don’t wait any longer to seek out medical care. And if you’re in Pembroke Pines, Rush Chiropractic is an excellent place to start.
We provide a wide variety of treatments, and we’ll work with you to build a custom treatment plan that fits your needs. Often, physical therapy serves as an excellent complement to other types of care like chiropractic adjustment, massage therapy, and electrical muscle stimulation.
Dr. Rush also has extensive experience with car accident injuries, so he’s well-equipped to help you diagnose the root cause of your pain and build a plan that will help you get back to feeling your best as soon as possible.
If this sounds like something you could benefit from, today’s a great day to take the first step on your healing journey! Give us a call at 954-432-5006 to schedule a consultation.
Dr. Rush is a 1994 graduate of the University of Florida where he earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Exercise Sports Science and Wellness.
Dr. Rush earned his Doctor of Chiropractic Degree at Life University in 2000 where he was honored with magna cum laude. Dr. Rush was born and raised in South Florida where he returned after graduation. He currently practices in Pembroke Pines where he owns and operates Rush Chiropractic and Rehab.
