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Why should you do your rehab?

Writer's picture: Harriet ShepherdHarriet Shepherd

Often chiropractors will give you a program of stretches/strength exercises to do at home to complement the manual therapy done together in the clinic. This is not just to give you extra burdens, or for fun, this is actually often a key part of treatment and can have a significant impact on your long term progress.


We call the programs ‘rehab’ because they help you recover - but how do they do that? 


The next few paragraphs will cover three of the benefits of following doing the exercises as set out for you by your chiropractor.





Pain Management


Movement helps keep your joints healthy because the process of contracting and relaxing your muscles improves the circulation of synovial fluid in the moving joint and the circulation of blood in the soft tissues around it. 


This is a large part of how the joints, as well as the tendons/ligaments and muscles around them get enough nutrients and lubrication to work properly. When we say “Motion is Lotion” in clinic (and you’ll likely hear it a lot!), this is what we mean.

Healthier joints are often happier, more resilient joints, and therefore less likely to be painful.


Functional Restoration 


If you’ve experienced lower back pain, you know that it’s often small activities that you used to take for granted that trigger the discomfort and annoy you the most - activities like putting on your socks, or emptying the dishwasher.

If you’ve had neck pain it’s often turning to reverse out of the drive that triggers you of the pain instead.


We call these “activities of daily living” or “ADLs” and these are the kinds of low-intensity movements that we’re trying to reintroduce as your body responds to treatment initially. Rehab stretches and exercises are part of how you can better prepare your body for these movements. 


For higher intensity movements - like those involved in sports, running, or strength exercises in the gym - these often require a higher level of preparation. Rehab programs are designed to help you progress from lower to higher intensity movements as smoothly as possible.


Preventative Measures


The goal of the rehab phase of care is often to improve the general health, strength and flexibility of the area being treated - all of these qualities will improve your long term outcomes by making the area more robust.


The strength and the health pieces of that are quite self-explanatory, but the flexibility aspect is often overlooked. 


Building flexibility around the hips does a lot to improve long term outcomes for lower back health, for example, but you might not necessarily think of stretching out the front of your thighs to help with your back pain. 


The reason it works is because your body is very task oriented: if you want to do something, the body will very often find a way to achieve it, even if it has to compensate and contort itself into odd positions to avoid some restriction in the movement chain. 



Picture the person picking up a box off the floor with a curved spine, just because they can’t get their hips low enough to squat. Now imagine their hips are perfectly flexible and they can get low enough to pick it up with a neutral spine - that’s a totally different level of strain on their lower back.


Conclusion


Rehab programs are an important part of chiropractic treatment because they can not only help alleviate current pain, but also reduce the risk of future pain by improving flexibility, strength, and movement patterns, allowing individuals to return to their chosen activities with less risk of further discomfort.



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