Beyond Opioids: How Physical Therapy can help with Pain Management

Physical therapy has been shown to be an effective means to help manage chronic pain. With today’s increasing dependence on opioid medication, there has been significant concern about dependency and addiction to these drugs. The American Physical Therapy Association has developed a white paper titled: Beyond Opioids: How Physical Therapy Can Transform Pain Management to Improve Health. The study shows how a physical therapist can identify and intervene.

Some of the risk factors that physical therapist can help identify include:

• Disease History: Conditions such as cardiovascular disease, osteoporosis and rheumatologic disease can affect an individual’s pain level.
• Cognitive and psychological factors: Disorders such as anxiety, depression, fear and post-traumatic stress disorders can be risk factors for the development of chronic pain.
• Beliefs: Negative beliefs running one’s condition can contribute to persistent pain.
• Sedentary lifestyle: There is a strong association between immobility and pain. Individuals who are overweight often have conditions such as low back pain, headaches, fibromyalgia and pelvic pain.

Once the contributors to someone’s pain is identified, the physical therapist can design an individualized treatment program combining the most appropriate techniques including exercise, manual therapy, and patient education.

• Exercise: Studies have shown that people who exercise regularly experience less pain. Physical therapists help develop, administer, modify and progress exercise prescriptions and programs to address poor conditioning, impaired strength, musculoskeletal imbalances, or deficiencies that may lead to pain.
• Manual therapy: Manual therapy involves hands-on mobilization of joints and soft tissue to modulate pain, reduce swelling and inflammation, and improve mobility. Research has shown that manual therapy techniques are effective at reducing low back pain and discomfort associated with other sources of pain.
• Stress management: Interventions such as relaxation, visualization, and graded exposure to stress producing events can help individuals reduce pain and improve their functional capacities.
• Sleep: People with persistent pain often complain of sleep disturbances. Sleep deprivation can lead to increased sensitivity levels and contribute to increased stress and pain. Physical therapy can help educate people regarding appropriate sleep hygiene to help combat the vicious cycle of persistent pain.
• Pain neuroscience education: People who don’t understand the mechanisms and contributors to their pain may be more likely to seek pharmacological treatment for that pain. Physical therapists can help educate patients about modern pain science that highlights the processes involved in pain. This can help empower them to provide hope and encouragement in their journey to overcome persistent pain.

If you’re dealing with persistent pain, whether you’re on pain medications or not, give us a call to see if we can help you manage, reduce, and eliminate your pain: 616-662-0990.

By: Steve Bartz, PT

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