Chronic and Persistent Pain

Chronic pain treatment combats pain that interferes with daily activities and has lasted months or years. We all experience physical pain in two ways–mechanical and chemical. Mechanical pain is often caused by a single event (like a sports injury), but may also be caused by repetitive and chronic mechanical stressors (such as sitting at your computer with poor posture). Chemical pain, on the other hand, is caused by inflammation, your body’s natural response to illness or injury. Mechanical and chemical pain can occur simultaneously. Because they are treated very differently, it is important to recognize and treat the mechanism or origination of pain, not pain as a symptom, as this is the biggest key to eliminating it. Single incident or repetitive stress induced mechanical pain is intermittent and relieved by training your body to avoid these specific stressors. A physical therapist prescribes individualized exercises to retrain the body to function correctly and maintain positional uniformity, thus relieving the muscle or joint pain. Chemical pain can only be treated by chemical means, such as substances that reduce inflammation or specific treatments or modalities.

SportsCare Physical Therapy

Both mechanical and chemical pain become chronic or persistent when the correct steps are not taken to properly treat the underlying problem. SportsCare Physical Therapy uses a unique method to treat pain which has not already responded to other techniques. Our approach to loss of function and disability focuses on the entire body, while working to restore balance and continuity throughout. We tailor our chronic pain treatments to fit your specific needs, including the use of movement therapy, manual therapy and therapeutic activities. After a thorough history report, a therapist will take you through a series of tests to analyze your movement and understand what motions cause your symptoms during both active and passive range of motion, as well as with static and repeated activities. The response to these movements is monitored to determine what increases, decreases or eliminates the pain, giving the assessor a baseline and direction for treatment. Through education and continued self-treatments, we will help manage and/or eliminate the chance for recurrence of certain symptoms.
If your pain is not responding to medications, give our clinic a call or request an appointment. We are currently treating chronic/persistent pain at all SportsCare locations.