Opioids Archives - Washington Physical Therapy

Ready to Relieve Pain the Natural Way? Say Goodbye to Drugs with PT

Kick Pain Management Drugs to the Curb Today!

The world we live in today is heavily medicated. Go to any grocery store or pharmacy and you'll find countless over-the-counter drugs. Doctors also consistently prescribe more extreme pain relievers, including opioids that have been widely abused over the years. Drug abuse is everywhere, and it is an ongoing battle that patients are constantly fighting.

If you've ever experienced an injury, you know it can turn your everyday life upside down. If it's a car accident, a sports-related injury, a workplace injury, or even an unintentional fall, the pain from a sudden injury can make you feel helpless. To fight this, many people resort to pain-relieving medications, such as opioids. However, what many people don't know is how much more damage these drugs do to their body than they realize.

If you're struggling with chronic pain but don't want to pump your body full of addictive drugs, you'll be delighted to discover a better, safer alternative: physical therapy. Physical therapy is a natural and effective approach to chronic pain that can make you feel better in the long-term. Let's look at how this kind of natural treatment will boost your quality of life!

You can choose the natural path to pain relief!

Your physical therapist is going to show you what to do but they don't have to do all the work! In order for physical therapy to be effective for you, you have to make an effort.

Our physical therapists here will take the time to teach you about your pain and the value of maintaining your stretches and workouts at home for long-term relief.

However, at the end of the day, you make the decision to completely partake in your journey to get rid of pain!

How can a physical therapist help relieve my pain?

Because everybody is different, and the pain levels of everyone are different, physical therapy procedures must be as well! Depending on your particular condition, your physical therapy pain treatment strategy may be different from anyone else's.

Your doctor might decide to use massage therapy, heat, ice, ultrasound, or other therapies to relieve your pain and speed up the healing process if you are dealing with pain from a recent injury.

If you are able to get up and exercise comfortably, a physical therapist will recommend simple stretching, walking, swimming, or cycling to assist with the mobilization process.

These kinds of physical therapy are excellent for helping to restore mobility to soft tissues, allowing them to function more freely and comfortably. They are also excellent at keeping arthritic joints mobile and lubricated.

Strengthening exercises can repair and rehabilitate weakened muscles to avoid causing pain. Physical therapy often includes certain exercises to help strengthen your posture, balance, and gait.

Why YOU should choose physical therapy

If you keep up with the news on a daily basis, you’ve most likely heard about the dangers of opioids. These narcotics, which include both illegal drugs and prescription medication, are the cause for at least 115 overdose deaths in America every single day.

The APTA states that clinicians “[…] should consider opioid therapy only if expected benefits for both pain and function are anticipated to outweigh risks to the patient." Opioids are extremely powerful and can interact with other drugs in a dangerous way. They also lead to abuse and addiction as well.

Steroids are another dangerous class of prescription medication, and pose many risks and dangers to your health. Epidural steroid injections are used to relieve pain, but can cause arthritis in the hips, cataracts, stomach ulcers, elevated blood sugar, and nerve damage stemming from the injection itself.

Even ordinary NSAIDs such as ibuprofen are capable of causing liver problems and bleeding in the stomach, which is worrisome, because many people who don’t even have chronic injuries use these daily.

Physical therapy can prevent you from having to deal with all of these unpleasant side effects. Some cases of severe discomfort might still require you to take medication, but physical therapy helps plenty of patients decrease -- or even eliminate -- their dependence on pain medication.

Our physical therapists will use a combination of treatment techniques to help get your pain condition under control, no matter if it’s from an acute injury, or a wound from a recent surgery.

Physical therapy is a good option for you especially if you’re looking for ongoing chronic pain management that doesn’t include constant drug usage, or if you’re already on other essential medications and you’re worried about how they will interact with your pain meds.

Ready to get started?

It should be clear now that opioids and over-the-counter medications are not the only choice for pain relief.

There are a variety of treatment services available to you via physical therapy. Our therapists are here, waiting for your call!

Contact Washington Physical Therapy and Rehabilitation today to learn more about our natural options and get back to a drug-free, pain-free lifestyle.

Source:

https://www.apta.org/apta-magazine/2018/10/01/moving-away-from-opioid-reliance

Manage Your Pain Without Opioids! Consult with a Physical Therapist

Discover Natural Treatment Methods for Your Pain

If you’ve been living with pain, opioids don’t have to be the answer.

Long-term opioid consumption is not a good strategy for managing chronic pain. In addition to the risk of addiction, opioids simply alleviate the symptoms (pain) of a larger problem.

For very real, measurable improvement over chronic pain, physical therapy has been proven to be a much better option than opioids or other pharmaceutical painkillers.

If you are considering opioids for pain relief but would like to explore other options first, contact our office to talk with a physical therapist.

Why shouldn’t opioids be used long-term?

The opioid epidemic in America has gotten so bad in recent years that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending that patients explore alternative options for pain relief.

The CDC recommends that opioids now be considered as a "last option" for only the worst pain cases.

Alternative and holistic pain relief methods, including physical therapy, are not as fast as opioids, but these methods do not carry the extreme risks of addiction and overdose.

It's important that anyone suffering from pain should understand that opioids will not solve the underlying physical problem that is causing the pain. In fact, opioids can make the original problem even worse.

For example, suppose a person is suffering chronic pain several months after having shoulder surgery.

The wound from surgery has long since healed, but the pain persists. If that patient relies on opioids to dull the pain, they run the risk of re-injuring their shoulder.

Pain is the way the body tells us that something is wrong. With opioids removing the pain, that patient might be using their shoulder muscles incorrectly and ultimately making the underlying problem worse.

If that same patient were to work with a physical therapist on pain relief, they stand a much better chance of eliminating the pain entirely.

Their shoulder could be healed through physical therapy, manual therapy, proper exercise, body mechanics and posture work -- all without turning to addictive opioid painkillers.

What should I know about the dangers of opioids?

Both opioid prescription rates and deaths from opioid overdoses have quadrupled in the last two decades.

Given these identical statistics, one can’t escape the obvious conclusion: Reliance on painkillers has gotten out of hand, and the consequences can be literally fatal.

In a study published by the American Physical Therapy Association, titled “Beyond Opioids: How Physical Therapy Can Transform Pain Management and Improve Health,” this issue is exhaustively analyzed. It identifies three important waves of the opioid epidemic:

Increases in deaths involving prescription opioids starting in 1999
Increases in deaths involving heroin starting in 2010
Increases in deaths involving synthetic opioids since 2013

Beyond extreme physical risk, over-reliance on prescription painkillers can have other detrimental effects on your health.

Withdrawal symptoms can be harrowing. And while you’re still using them, opioids can lead to depression, which sets up a vicious cycle of self-medicating in order to feel better emotionally as well as physically.

The Centers for Disease Control offers some frightening statistics from opioid overuse in 2011:

Sales of prescription painkillers to pharmacies and providers had increased 300% since 1999
In 2010, 12 million people ages 12 and older reported using prescription painkillers “non-medically”
More than 40 people were dying each day from overdoses involving prescription opioids

Fortunately, as the APTA study concludes, there is a safer alternative to opioid use: physical therapy.

If you have been struggling with pain or discomfort, contact us today.

Discover long-term pain relief with physical therapy

Researchers at Stanford University have shown that turning to physical therapy early on, as soon as a person is diagnosed with musculoskeletal pain, reduced the need for opioid pain prescriptions by 7 to 16 percent.

Among patients who did require opioids for pain relief, the duration of using painkillers was reduced by as much as 10 percent.

Physical therapy helps patients to cure the source of the pain, rather than ignoring the source by dulling the pain.

If a patient suffers from arthritis or any other type of chronic pain, a physical therapist can teach that patient the proper ways to move and utilize key muscle groups so that the pain source does not worsen.

Another goal of physical therapy will be to strengthen muscle groups that support aching or painful parts of the body, so that real healing can take place.

Your choice to pursue physical therapy will not be a quick solution to pain relief, in most cases. But your physical therapist will construct a customized plan that will produce measurable results in pain relief.

Because the work will be geared toward curing the source of the pain, you can often eliminate the need for prescription painkillers or opioids.

Find natural pain relief today!

If you suffer from chronic pain and want to know more about how physical therapy can help, call our office today to schedule your first appointment with a licensed physical therapist.

Ready to Say Goodbye to Opioids? Find Effective Relief Through PT!

Did You Know that Physical Therapy Can Help You Achieve Even Better Results than Opioids?

Another day, another trip to the pharmacy. This is the treadmill that many chronic pain sufferers find themselves walking, month after month and year after year.

Prescription pain medications can only do so much to keep your suffering at bay -- and in the case of opioids, you may find yourself purchasing larger amounts more frequently just to keep up with your ever-increasing tolerance to these powerful drugs.

If you're tired of exhausting your patience, wellness and wallet, maybe it's time you talked to your doctor about switching to physical therapy as your primary pain management strategy.

Physical therapy can help you govern your pain without drugs, giving you a chance to break away from your reliance on opioids.

How physical therapy can help you find effective and long-lasting relief

Instead of emptying your pockets on frequent drug refills that don't even address the source of your discomfort, ask your doctor whether physical therapy might help you wean yourself off of opioids or other medications. (You may need medical supervision to reduce heavy opioid use safely.)

An experienced physical therapist can examine the reasons for your pain and then devise a targeted, personalized pain management plan. Here are just a few of the ways physical therapy can replace all those bottles of pills:

Chronic nerve pain can be controlled with a technique called transcutaneous electrical muscle stimulation (TENS), which uses electrical impulses to intercept pain messages. Cold laser therapy can ease neuropathy symptoms and promote nerve healing.
Chronic muscle spasms respond well to cold laser therapy, massage therapy, and heat/cold therapy.
Chronic headache/migraine pain can be reduced through a combination of massage, cervical spinal adjustment, and lifestyle or dietary changes to help you avoid known headache or migraine triggers.
Severe neck or back pain can be managed through a combination of strength training, stretching exercises, and chiropractic adjustment.
If you suffer from crippling arthritis pain, physical therapy exercises and massage therapy can help you control joint pain and stiffness.

The many perils of opioids

There's no disputing the fact that pain medication is a profitable industry. In addition to the enormous sums spent by consumers on over-the-counter pain relievers, the worldwide market for opioid drugs has been estimated at $25.4 billion -- and it's expected to keep growing.

Opioids prevent pain signals from reaching the brain, enabling them to combat even the most severe pain. Unfortunately, the price of frequent opioid use far exceeds the money you pay for these drugs. The more you use opioids, the more likely your body is to develop a tolerance against them.

As a result, you need to keep taking more frequent and/or more potent doses to achieve the same degree of pain relief. This is a fast, potentially deadly path to addiction.

Don't assume that you're getting a good deal from non-addictive pain relievers, by the way. Milder drugs such as ibuprofen, aspirin, and acetaminophen may not get you "hooked," but their painkilling effects are short-lived, forcing you to keep dosing yourself every few hours.

These medicines can also cause health problems with frequent or heavy use, with risks ranging from stomach bleeding to liver failure.

Find pain relief with physical therapy today

Physical therapy can help you get a handle on your pain so that you don't need opioids anymore. Of course, you should only discontinue high doses of opioids under professional medical supervision (to prevent a potentially dangerous withdrawal).

In the meantime, however, our physical therapist can work with you on treating the biomechanical problems that caused your pain in the first place.

Here are just a few of the physical therapy modalities that can help you conquer your pain:

Exercises can increase your pain-free range of motion, strengthen the muscles that support your body, and increase blood flow to reduce inflammation.
Massage therapy can control painful muscle spasms, help the tissues expel inflammatory substances, and direct more blood and oxygen to an injury.
Laser therapy can ease pain caused by injuries, arthritis, muscular strain, tendinitis, or neuropathy.
Transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) uses electrical energy to block pain signals to nerves.

Say goodbye to opioids, once and for all!

If you're going to invest time, effort and money into feeling better, do it in a way that actually helps your body for safer long-term solutions.

If your doctor agrees that physical therapy can help you ditch the drugs, contact our physical therapist to schedule an initial appointment and work out a pain management program!

Sources:

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