62. Physiotherapy

Physiotherapy is also called physical therapy. It is the treatment of diseases and physical defects of the body by remedies such as massage or electricity, rather than by using drugs. Massage, moving muscles and bones, exercises, cold, heat, and light are therapies used to assist in treating patients bring back normal function after an illness or injury. Generally speaking, the role of a physiotherapist is to incorporate a variety of techniques in order to help your bones, muscles and joints, which may have previously been damaged or broken to work again to their full potential.

Functions of posture and movement are not explicable on account of joint and muscle functions, not even when the coherence between them is set out as a complex, interactive structure in which reactions, aided by various proprioceptive and exteroceptive reflexes are induced by autonomous external stimuli. The danger in this case is that treatment might then be based on the mechanical ( morphological, orthopaedic, or purely physiological) components of the motor apparatus, even when there is no question of objective and demonstrable morphological deviations calling for disease-specific treatment.

By following a recommended physiotherapy program both as an outpatient and through exercises you can do at home, it helps to speed up the recovery and healing process and to reduce stiffness, pain and increase your mobility. Not only is it just about exercising, a physic’s role is also about educating people and offering them advice about how a particular condition they have been suffering from may have arisen, how it might have been prevented in the first place and how to prevent it from reoccurring in the future.

Whilst surgery can correct certain medical problems, you can often only recover your true physical capabilities and return to full mobility and enjoy as normal a lifestyle as possible if you follow a defined physiotherapy programme after your operation. Although mostly connected to orthopaedics, physiotherapy can help people who have suffered from a variety of other conditions. For example, it can help following pregnancy and gynaecological surgery, people who have suffered with chronic chest problems and those who have suffered from head injuries or strokes to name but a few.

Your physiotherapist is there to ensure that they give you the best possible solutions tailored specifically for you in order that you reach a point in time at which, whatever your problem or condition was in the first instance which necessitated in you requiring surgery, your health, mobility and general physical and mental well-being are all improved significantly as a result, hopefully for the long-term.