Why You Should Always Follow The Instructions Of Your Physiotherapist

Physiotherapists exist to help you heal from all kinds of injuries and deal with pain from various joint and muscle conditions. When a physiotherapist sends you home with an instruction sheet of how to do various stretches and exercises at home, you need to follow what he/she tells you. It is akin to your doctor sending you home with a prescription for medication; you have to follow through if you expect to get better. There are other reasons why you should always follow the instructions and at-home exercises your physiotherapist gives you.

You Learn Self-Care for Your Pain or Injuries

Learning to do and to use the stretches or exercises at home means that your physiotherapist is attempting to teach you self-care. If you learn how to do these exercises/stretches, and you practice them regularly, you are treating yourself. This means that eventually, you will not need the physiotherapist because you have and use all of the tools that your physiotherapist has given you.

Your Physiotherapist Has Already Gauged How Slowly or Quickly You Should Heal

If you are recovering from a sports injury, surgery, or car accident, your physiotherapist can gauge within the first few treatment sessions how quickly or slowly you will heal. Then your physiotherapist develops a treatment plan based on how fast or slow you should work to regain optimal results and ambulation. When you follow the therapist's at-home care instructions, you are keeping up with the timeline and treatment plan created by the therapist. Not doing what your therapist has asked or instructed you to do often results in a delay in healing and an extended treatment plan that your health insurance might not cover.

You Will Find That the In-Office Visits Are Less Painful

Right now, you may feel that everything you are experiencing in the therapist's office hurts, and hurts a lot. That is because you are not doing anything in between your visits to the office to keep muscles from becoming tight and/or joints from becoming stiff. Following through with the at-home exercises and treatment instructions keeps the muscles lax and the joints free of stiffness and pain. Then, when you visit the physiotherapist, the exercises you do with him/her in the office feel significantly less painful. Everything will be easier to do. You will also find that, during the in-office exercises, you are able to push beyond the normal extensions and flexions to gain greater flexibility.

Get in touch with an office such as Reactive Physiotherapy for more information.


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