How Rehabilitative Exercise Can Help Your Chronic Pain

Everyone experiences pain at some point, but it's often short-lived. Medications and other treatments cover up the pain, while rehabilitative exercise helps you overcome pain by building strength and flexibility. When your pain sticks around, though, it's much harder to eliminate.

At Pinnacle Health Chiropractic, Dr. Jason Ablett offers rehabilitative exercise for various types of chronic pain. If you're tired of dealing with pain daily, Dr. Ablett formulates a customized treatment plan to get you the relief you need finally.

What causes chronic pain?

Chronic pain is a type of pain that lasts for longer than three months. It can affect just about any part of your body and vary in severity. Chronic pain differs from acute pain, the type of pain you have when you get injured.

Your body recovers from acute pain once the injury has healed. However, when you have chronic pain, the discomfort continues even after your body has recovered from the wound or injury.

There are many different forms of chronic pain. Some of the causes you may experience include the following:

• Arthritis
• Migraines
• Complex regional pain syndrome
• Sciatica
• Degenerative disc disease
• Auto accidents
• Fibromyalgia

Chronic pain is often difficult to treat, especially unrelated to a specific illness or injury. The effects of chronic pain spread into your mental health, often leading to insomnia, depression, and extreme fatigue.

However, you don't need to lose hope, as many treatments are available that help you minimize your discomfort to lead a productive life.

Understanding rehabilitative exercise

Rehabilitative exercise is a great way to recover from an injury or chronic pain. Dr. Ablett uses rehabilitative exercises for many patients to prevent surgery or other more invasive procedures.

When you enroll in our rehabilitative exercise program, you can expect several treatments during each session. Dr. Ablett customizes your rehabilitative exercise program with treatments like:

• Stretching exercises
• Exercise plans
• Chiropractic adjustments
• Fascia release
• Strength training

Your rehabilitative exercise plan usually involves you coming into the office several times a week. It's an intensive program Dr. Ablett uses to help you control your pain and improve other aspects of your health.

Following through with a rehabilitative exercise program is a great way to minimize chronic pain and improve your mood and conditioning.

Easing pain through exercise

Conditions like arthritis, sciatica, and fibromyalgia affect the joints and muscles in your body. The pain from these conditions makes even small tasks seem impossible.

However, when you enroll in rehabilitative exercise, Dr. Ablett gives you the tools to improve other areas of your body to improve your pain. By training different body parts and enhancing strength, you're setting yourself up for a much healthier and pain-free life.

A few of the ways Dr. Ablett uses rehabilitative exercise to decrease your pain levels include the following means:

Improves strength

Each week you'll focus on different aspects of your body's strength. Dr. Ablett evaluates your abilities during your first session to determine how much weight to start with.

As your program progresses, you'll build strength through weight training and bodyweight exercises. These exercises help build your muscles, which support your bones and joints.

Enhances flexibility

Flexibility is another vital component of pain management. Many types of chronic pain cause stiffness in your muscles and joints. Dr. Ablett slowly works with you to improve your flexibility through static stretching and home practices like yoga.

Flexibility also allows you to work on your balance, which helps you avoid falls and other injuries as you age.

Fosters joint mobility

Arthritis is one of the main culprits behind joint pain and immobility. Our rehabilitative exercise program fosters movement in all your joints to relieve pain and improve your mobility.

Stretching and weight training are essential to improving the movement within your joints. As the program progresses, you should notice that it's easier to move joints that were stiff in the past.

Improves mood

Chronic pain often causes issues with your mental health. When you enroll in our rehabilitative exercise program, the exercises and improvement in mobility will help you improve your mood and fight symptoms of depression and anxiety.

As your pain slowly dissipates, you should notice that you feel better about yourself and getting back to your usual activities.

To learn more about our rehabilitative exercise program, call our office today to make a consultation or schedule an appointment online using the booking tool on our web page.