By Jarrad Lethbridge
Senior Physiotherapist and Managing Partner at Life Ready Scarborough and Life Ready Floreat
My *insert body part here* is sore!
Guess I should stop exercising and hope it goes away…
This idea tends to go on like a light bulb in our heads whenever we have an injury, often leading us to stop doing our regular activities that we enjoy. We become de-conditioned when our little problem lingers on for several weeks or months and eventually, that small issue starts affecting surrounding joints and muscles leading to biomechanical alterations and adaptive loading patterns.
STOP!
Your health is your most valuable asset so why wouldn’t you look after it? Outlined below are the top nine reasons to see a physiotherapist.
- Is it sore?
- Is it mechanical (e.g. worse with activity, certain movements or positions?)
- Is it still a problem after… weeks?
- Googling your problem hasn’t fixed it yet
- You can’t remember whether the right treatment was… ice, heat, massage, rest or something else entirely
- You’d like a professional opinion because you understand that getting the right advice now might save you a lot of pain later
- You love learning how your body works and how you can take care of it best
- You want to get the most out of life. Physiotherapists are experts in performance as well as injury prevention
- Physios can send you for investigative scans to confirm your diagnosis and screen for nasties
If in doubt of who to see, don’t despair. Physios are tertiary qualified and first contact practitioners. This means you do not need a referral to see one and they are specially trained to know when you’re problem is outside their scope of practice (think abdominal pain, tumour, non mechanical problems).
So put down that men’s/women’s magazine telling you to fast three days a week or only eat goji berries. Use the Ask a Physio button on our website to get your pressing questions answered – on the same day – by an expert physiotherapist.
