Chiropractic Care and Post-Injury Recovery: Your Path to Rehabilitation
Have you recently injured yourself? Maybe you tried to move a heavy chair and over stretched a muscle in your back. Or maybe you went a little hard during a pick-up game of basketball and twisted your knee. Regardless, you’re hurting now and want to find relief. Have you considered chiropractic care for post-injury recovery?
If not, you aren’t alone: many people don’t realize that a chiropractor can play an important role in injury rehabilitation. But chiropractic care is actually an excellent choice!
As a field of healthcare, chiropractic focuses on the ways the body can heal itself. By adjusting misalignments in the spine, we can help you manage your pain during recovery and learn to move more efficiently, reducing the chances of suffering a similar injury in the future.
At Zenlife Physiotherapy & Wellness, we proudly incorporate chiropractic care into our comprehensive post-injury rehabilitation programs. If you’re currently rehabilitating after an injury and want to know more about how chiropractic care can help, call our Calgary clinic today!
What Injuries Can Chiropractic Care Help Rehabilitate?
Chiropractors are highly knowledgeable in your body’s musculoskeletal system, particularly the spine. That makes them an ideal choice for any number of common bone and soft tissue injuries, including the following:
- Strains: Muscle and tendon strains are among the most common injuries. They occur when the muscle or tendon is overstretched, leading to pain and immobility in the affected area. Back strains are especially common and often result from attempting to pick up something too heavy.
- Sprains: A sprain is similar to a strain but affects the ligaments, the tissue that connects the bones together.
- Ligament Tears: Sometimes, ligaments can be torn rather than simply overstretched. These types of injuries are common in the shoulder and knees. A complete tear may require surgery (which will then require a lengthy rehabilitation afterward). However, physiotherapy alone can often resolve a partial tear–with chiropractic care serving as an excellent complement!
- Fractures: A fracture is a broken bone. While chiropractic care cannot resolve a fracture, it can help with your rehabilitation afterward by improving your mobility, managing pain, and helping you to rebuild your strength.
As you can see, chiropractic care for post-injury recovery is about more than just back and neck pain. Especially when paired with physiotherapy, chiropractic care can help with all sorts of rehabilitation programs.
Which Chiropractic Care Techniques Help with Post-Injury Recovery?
At Zenlife Physiotherapy & Wellness, we believe in an integrated approach to patient care. Our chiropractors will work alongside our physiotherapists to provide you with a personalized, comprehensive rehabilitation program. We have several techniques we might utilize depending on your needs:
- Spinal Adjustments: A backbone of many chiropractic treatment plans, a spinal adjustment involves sharply thrusting the spine through its range of motion, helping to release mobility restrictions and reduce pain. We can use similar techniques on other joints as well.
- Spinal & Joint Mobilizations: If a spinal adjustment is too intense, we can try a mobilization instead. During a mobilization, we gently guide your spine (or another joint) through its current range of motion. It offers similar benefits as an adjustment.
- Soft Tissue Therapy: This massage-like technique will help release restrictions or tension in your muscles, ligaments, and tendons. In addition to providing pain relief, it facilitates recovery by promoting blood flow to the affected area.
- Corrective Exercises: Our chiropractors can suggest tailored exercises to build strength and correct muscular imbalances that may have contributed to your injury.
- Lifestyle Suggestions: We can help you make healthy changes in your daily life to facilitate your rehabilitation and prevent another injury. From postural corrections to ergonomic modifications, we’ll develop a strategy that works for you!
What to Expect During Your Chiropractic Appointments
We’ll always begin with a comprehensive evaluation to help us understand your injury and impairments. We’ll talk with you about the injury itself, your rehabilitation goals, and what sort of pain and/or mobility restrictions you’re experiencing.
Our chiropractors can also perform a comprehensive physical assessment to help us locate spinal misalignments, muscular weaknesses, and other issues that might hinder your rehabilitation. We’ll run simple mobility screens, check your posture, and more.
Once we have a complete picture of your injury, our chiropractors will work closely alongside other members of your care team, including your physiotherapist and physician, to develop a plan that suits your needs.
At subsequent appointments, we’ll guide you through your treatment plan. Because no two plans are alike, it’s difficult to say exactly what this will look like. But generally speaking, we’ll use a blend of different techniques to help you manage your pain and improve your mobility so that you can maximize the time spent in rehabilitation.
We can also help you with any exercises you’re struggling with and show you simple exercises or self-massage techniques you can do at home. Often, the work you do outside your rehabilitation sessions makes all the difference!
Chiropractic Care for Post-Injury Recovery: Start Your Journey Today!
Rehabilitating after an injury can be a long and often difficult process. The chiropractors at Zenlife Physiotherapy & Wellness play an important role in helping you make the most of your recovery so you can return to the activities you love!
Chiropractic care for post-injury recovery is a multifaceted approach. When paired with a physiotherapy rehabilitation program, it can help make all the difference. Ready to see that difference for yourself? Request your appointment today!