Do you need neck physical therapy? To relieve your neck pain and restore body movements, your doctor may ask you to visit a physical therapist. Physical therapy is essential to restore your health, no matter if you have cervical spine surgery or any other condition.

There are two types of treatments in physical therapy; active treatment and passive treatment. With passive therapy, you and your body will relax. This type of treatment also prepares the body for therapeutic exercise, which is a part of active treatment.

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Signs and Symptoms

The symptoms depend on the structure and tissues that are affected, and in severe conditions of injury.

You may be suffering from neck pain for the following reasons:

• Difficult to look up
• Difficult to look to your shoulder
• Muscle spasm
• Inability to rotate or bend your neck
• Weak shoulder and arm muscles

Pain in your neck can cause the following:

• Headaches
• Tight muscles
• Weakness in your arms
• Tingling or numbness in your hands, arms, shoulder, and neck
• Pain in your upper back, neck, shoulders, hands, or arms
• Pain gets worse while sitting, reaching, sneezing, or coughing
• Inability to sit up or straight or stand straight
• Difficulty in sleeping due to pain
• Pain gets worse at night or in the morning
• Inability to stay in one position for a long time, such as standing or sitting, because of pain
• Feeling of getting stuck in one position, or stiffness while you try to move such as hunching forward, or while leaning your head to a side

How Is It Diagnosed?

A physical therapist will perform a detailed examination and evaluate your health history. He or she may ask various in-depth questions about your injury or pain, such as:

• When and how your pain started?
• When does your pain get worse?
• What are your discomforts, and locations of your discomforts?
• What activities are you unable to perform?

In order to find the physical problems, your physical therapist will perform various tests on your body, such as:

• Poor posture
• Joint stiffness
• Loss of reflexes
• Loss of your skin sensation in some area or numbness
• Tightness or weakness in the muscle
• Difficulty moving
• Difficulty walking

If a physical therapist finds the above-mentioned issues in you, he or she will start your physical therapy straight away. This is to get you back on the road to recovery and enable you to perform normal activities.

If a therapist finds any severe conditions while testing, they will collaborate with a surgeon or physician for special diagnostic testing, for instance, MRI. Physical therapists don’t hesitate to work with physicians or any other health care providers, just to ensure that you are receiving a proper diagnosis and treatment that you need.

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Benefits of Neck Physical Therapy

Physical therapists are experts on body movement. They can improve a patient’s quality of life through patient education, hands-on care, and prescribed movement. Physical therapists provide care to increase the lifespan to anyone with disabilities. Here are some benefits of physical therapy:

1.     Maximize Your Movement

Physical therapists can recognize, diagnose, and treat movement issues. Pain-free movement is essential for living a quality life, your independence, and the ability to earn your living.

2.     Personalized Care That is According to your Needs

Physical therapists design treatment plans depending on each person’s individual needs, goals, and challenges. Physical Therapy helps people manage pain and various other chronic conditions, improve mobility, prevent future chronic diseases and injuries, and recover from injuries.

3.     Care Where You Need It

Physical therapists provide care wherever you need it, including homes, hospitals, nursing homes, work settings, sports and fitness centers, schools, outpatient clinics, and private practices.

4.     Participate In Your Recovery

Physical therapists empower you to stay active with their care. Physical therapists also work with other health professionals to make sure that you are receiving the best care.

5.     Avoid Opioids

In some conditions of neck pain, prescription opioids are part of the medical treatment. However, according to the CDC, health care providers should avoid using opioids. Instead, they should offer safer suggestions to their patients, such as physical therapy. Using opioids for long-term pain may include various risks and side effects such as addiction, overdose, and depression. Furthermore, these risks also include withdrawal symptoms when you stop using opioids.

6.     Avoid Surgery

You should try physical therapy before going for invasive or expensive surgery. For some conditions, such as spinal stenosis, rotator cuff tears, degenerative disk disease, meniscal tears, and knee osteoarthritis, physical therapy treatment is much more effective than surgery.

Conclusion

While treating the neck pain, the main focus of good physical therapy is to recover the flexibility and strength of your neck. To find out more about neck pain or physical therapy, you can visit our clinic. You can find all the details on our website.

If you are looking to set-up an appointment with a professional therapist, contact us today:

ACTIVECARE PHYSICAL THERAPY
29 West 38th Street
Suite 601
New York, NY 10018

(212) 777-4374
staff@bestptnyc.com