This week, I decided to explore a physical therapy program for another part of the body: the back. For my next assessment, I hope to be able to write about a mentor visit, but until that gets scheduled I am doing another research essay in the meantime. I decided to choose this as my research topic for this week because three days ago in a soccer game, my sister strained something in her back and is currently doing physical therapy for it so I decided to educate myself more over the topic in order to be as helpful to her as possible.
This article centered its focus around mostly lower back pain and how to treat it both long and short term. I thought this was fitting because I, along with the majority of females and athletes, suffer from lower back pain almost constantly. Back pain has always been, for me at least, one of those annoying little injuries that aren’t bad enough to go to the doctor for but prevalent enough to constantly hinder my movements in my daily life. My sister’s back injury has given me the push I needed to educate myself on back pain and find a physical therapy program for it so that I can hopefully eliminate this nagging injury for myself and also be able to offer advice to my teammates and friends in the future if they are also struggling with back pain. From the article I learned that a physical therapy program usually has two components: passive physical therapy to help reduce the patient’s pain to a more manageable level and active exercises to increase flexibility, strength, and conditioning (Ullrich, 1). The combination of these two physical therapy methods is the most effective way to reduce (and hopefully eliminate permanently) back pain quickly. Passive physical therapy is, essentially, methods of physical therapy that do not require anything from the patient - meaning the patient isn’t actually moving or exercising. These therapies are considered passive because they are done to the patient. They are also called modalities. Some examples of these therapies include heat application, ice application and ultrasounds (Ullrich, 1). Equally as important are the active exercises, all of which fall into three categories: stretching, strengthening, and low impact aerobic conditioning. Almost every person who is suffering from low back pain can trace it back to having tight hamstrings. Stretching a person’s hamstrings hamstrings once or twice daily can make a huge difference. Simple hamstring stretching does not take much time, and by making it a part of the daily routine, it can help reduce back pain significantly. For strengthening, it is recommended to do about fifteen to twenty minutes of dynamic lumbar stabilization or other prescribed exercises every other day (Ullrich, 2). What is also very important to strengthen to reduce back pain is the core. Having a strong core will take a lot of pressure off of your back, reducing your pain and long term effects. The last category of active physical therapy for back pain is low-impact aerobic conditioning. Low-impact aerobic conditioning is absolutely vital in long-term pain reduction. There are a lot of options, some of which being walking, swimming, bicycling, or even water therapy. These exercises are best done for thirty to forty minutes three times weekly, but on opposite days from your strengthening exercises so as not to overwork yourself and risk making the injury worse (Ullrich, 3). Maintaining a physical therapy program for your back pain is easy, even for patients with busy schedules. It does not take up very much time at all, and as with all kinds of physical therapy, the key to being successful faster is simply to keep up with your exercises.
Lower back pain has been a constant in my life for as long as I can remember, but now that I have gained this knowledge about how to treat it, I have high hopes that I will be able to reduce it and eventually eliminate it for good. I am also hopeful that this knowledge will allow me to help out other people too, such as my teammates and friends with lower back pain, because that is always my overarching goal as a physical therapist.