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Physical Therapy can help you ditch the pain meds!

Millions of individuals live with chronic pain. To cope with everything from back and joint pain to debilitating pain from accidents, many people have turned to pain medication. Whether prescription or over-the-counter, there are several drawbacks to relying on medication to relieve pain. Pain pills can sometimes interact with other medications, they can be addictive, and they ultimately only mask symptoms instead of treating them. Physical therapy is a good alternative to the long-term use of pain medication.

Why Choose Physical Therapy?

There are several reasons why physical therapy is a great alternative to relying on pain meds. One of the primary reasons to choose physical therapy is that it can treat the root causes and not just the symptoms of your pain. While pain medication may give you instant relief, it doesn’t last. You remain in an endless cycle of taking more and more medication. There is also the cost to consider. Years of prescription medication, even at a reasonable price, will likely add up to more than the cost of how much physical therapy you’ll need.

What Can Physical Therapy Do for Individuals Living with Pain?

While the thought of doing exercises, or almost any type of physical activity, may sound unpleasant to a person living with pain, the right kind of movement can be extremely helpful. Physical therapy targets the area of your pain and works on treating the condition instead of temporarily masking it. A physical therapy routine can improve your overall strength and endurance. It can also improve joint stability and increase joint and muscle flexibility. According to PT in Motion, physical therapy can even help rewire the brain to reduce chronic pain. There are several conditions that physical therapy can help.

  • Osteoarthritis Arthritis and Rheumatoid Arthritis
  • Chronic Headaches
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Neuropathic Pain Caused by Injuries
  • Stroke

What Treatment Options are Available?

A trained physical therapist can use a variety of treatment methods to reduce or completely eliminate your pain. Manual therapy, which is also known as bodywork, is one of the most commonly used and effective types of treatment available. Manual therapies can include massage and joint manipulation. There are several other specific techniques that a physical therapist may use to help alleviate pain.

  • Cold Laser Therapy�– Cold lasers overwhelm injured tissues with photons. This can stimulate the healing process in cells that are damaged. When the healing process begins, this naturally reduces the level of pain.
  • Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulation�– This is also called TENS, and it involves low voltage currents that stimulate a painful area of the body. The electricity reaches the body through electrodes attached to various areas on the skin. This can increase endorphins, which naturally reduce pain.
  • Graded Motor Imagery�– This uses the brain’s neural connections to eliminate pain. The therapy includes visualizing movement and training the brain to overcome different types of pain.
  • Ultrasound�– Ultrasound works by using sound waves that generate heat. This ultimately promotes an increase in blood flow. Increased blood flow can promote healing in the affected areas.

While using pain medication for a short while may be effective, physical therapy is a much better option for long-term relief from pain. Contact Premier Therapy Centers and an experienced physical therapist can do a complete assessment on your current condition and create a customized therapy plan that’s right for you. You can start enjoying reduced pain in your life with the help of physical therapy!

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3 Natural Pain Remedies To Help You Kick Opioids

Does the prospect of taking painkilling drugs for the rest of your life fill you with concern? If it doesn’t, then it should — especially if the drugs in question are opioids.

Our nation is in the midst of an opioid epidemic. Many chronic pain sufferers who can’t get the relief they need from NSAIDs or steroids feel that they have no choice but to turn to the more powerful opioid drugs.

Unfortunately, opioids can present some major problems, from mind-addling intoxication to addiction and the possibility of a fatal overdose. That’s why you should consider the natural pain-relieving power of physical therapy as a safer, more beneficial alternative.

We put together a list of ways a physical therapist can help to keep your pain at bay. Call There’s good news for you though: physical therapy can provide the kind of pain relief you’re seeking. Contact Premier Therapy Centers to set up an appointment and get back to living a more comfortable, pain-free life!

Choosing physical therapy over opioids

When you have chronic pain, severe injury, surgery, or significant trauma, your brain cannot produce enough opioids to keep up with the demand. Prescription medication mimics the chemicals your body naturally produces, relieving pain, but they do not help your body heal.

Physical therapy offers natural, safe, and effective pain relief with 0 risks to you, and this is how.

1. Physical therapy reduces stress on your nerves and muscles.

When your body cannot maintain its natural balance, support, and symmetry, chronic pain conditions occur. This is due to the fact that your spinal column requires adequate support from major muscle groups to maintain a healthy posture and musculoskeletal alignment.

If your muscles become weakened, tight, or damaged, they won’t be up to the job, so they tire easily and develop chronic strain. The resulting postural imbalances can then lead to other painful issues, from herniated discs to pinched nerves.

The good news? Physical therapy can quite literally straighten these problems out! Our physical therapist may prescribe exercises to strengthen your back and neck muscles, lending your spine that much-needed support and easing the strain on those tissues. Improvements in your posture can help take the pressure off of nerves, relieving neurological pain. They might even recommend treatments such as chiropractic adjustment to correct spinal imbalances, thus removing painful stress on your body.

2. Physical therapy makes it easier for you to move your joints.

Strengthening exercises can help take the burden off of your joint’s bones and cartilage by allowing the surrounding muscles and connective tissues to do more of the work. Heat therapy, laser therapy, and massage therapy are also known to help inflamed joints feel and move better.

If you have crippling osteoarthritis in your knees or hips, you might be shocked to hear a physical therapstrecommend that you take up walking. But walking can indeed help reduce chronic joint pain and help arthritic joints move more freely.

If you’re not ready for walking, you may benefit from swimming or other aquatic exercises in which the water supports your body.

3. Physical therapy can decrease inflammation.

A moderate exercise routine can prompt the sympathetic nervous system to reign in those inflammatory processes that cause pain and swelling.

Inflammation occurs as part of your immune system’s natural response to disease or injury. To an extent, it’s a healthy response to pain, but your body can experience too much inflammation which can cause pain. Many kinds of chronic pain are inflammatory in nature or origin.

Certain white blood cells and proteins trigger inflammatory processes even as they’re fighting to help protect tissues. However, your body also has a process for suppressing the production of these substances. It’s called sympatho adrenergic activation — and physical therapy exercises can trigger it.

Physical therapy can also help your body to rid itself of accumulated inflammatory substances by boosting your circulation. Massage, heat, cold, and laser therapy all increase blood flow to inflamed tissues. This allows the tissues to expel toxins that cause or worsen your inflammation.

You can say “no” to opioids with the help of physical therapy. Chronic pain can make you curl up in bed and turn to opioids for pain management. It’s important to note that physical therapy can be implemented to treat all types of neuropathic pain and musculoskeletal pain. It can help alleviate pain due to several pain conditions, including:

  • Osteoarthritis
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Rheumatoid arthritis
  • Neuropathic pain
  • Work injuries
  • Sports-related injuries
  • Headaches and more

Let’s conquer your pain problem once and for all

Opioids and other painkilling drugs have their place in medicine, but you don’t have to rely on them as your only weapons against chronic pain. Contact Premier Therapy Centers about how a physical therapy program could hold the natural solutions you need!

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Opioid Consumption Can Be Fatal; Feel Better with Physical Therapy Instead!

Have you ever been prescribed opioid medications for healing after a serious injury? If your answer is yes, think again! Opioids are not meant for healing. They’re only band-aids that mask painful symptoms and don’t do a single thing to take care of the underlying cause of your pain. Opioids also pose a large threat of fatal overdose as well.

Long-term opioid consumption is not a good strategy for managing chronic pain. In addition to the risk of addiction, opioids simply alleviate the symptoms (pain) of a larger problem. If you’re in search of measurable, safe, and effective improvement from your chronic pain, come see our physical therapists!

Physical therapy has been proven to be a much better option than opioids or other pharmaceutical painkillers. If you are considering opioids for pain relief but would like to explore other options first, contact our office to talk with a physical therapist.

What’s the problem with opioids?

No, we’re not being dramatic: there’s a lethal problem with the use of opioids.

Anyone suffering from pain must understand that opioids will not solve the underlying physical problem that is causing the pain. Opioids can make the original problem even worse.

The opioid epidemic in America has gotten so bad in recent years that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending that patients explore alternative options for pain relief. The CDC recommends that opioids now be considered as a “last option” for only the worst pain cases.

For example, suppose a person is suffering chronic pain several months after having shoulder surgery. The wound from surgery has long since healed, but the pain just won’t let up. If that patient relies on opioids to dull the pain, they are putting themselves at risk of re-injuring their shoulder down the road. Pain is the way the body tells us that something is wrong. With opioids removing the pain, that patient might be using their shoulder muscles incorrectly and ultimately making the underlying problem worse!

If that same patient were to work with a physical therapist on pain relief, they stand a much better chance of eliminating the pain. Their shoulder could be healed through physical therapy, manual therapy, proper exercise, body mechanics, and posture work — all without turning to addictive opioid painkillers.

Why physical therapy is a safer, better alternative to opioids

Just because opioids aren’t the best option out there for pain relief doesn’t mean you have to suffer! There are much better options available to you if you’re looking for a way to recover safely.

Alternative and holistic pain relief methods, including physical therapy, are not as fast as opioids, but these methods do not carry the extreme risks of addiction and overdose!

Research performed at Stanford University has shown that choosing physical therapy early, as soon as a person is diagnosed with musculoskeletal pain, reduced the need for opioid pain prescriptions by 7 to 16 percent. In fact, “For patients with shoulder, back or knee pain who did use opioids, early physical therapy was associated with a 5 to 10 percent reduction in how much of the drug they used.” That’s incredible, right?

The beauty of physical therapy is that it helps patients to pinpoint and cure the source of the pain, rather than ignoring the source by dulling the symptoms.

If you’re living with osteoarthritis or any other type of chronic pain, a physical therapist can teach you the proper ways to move and utilize key muscle groups so that the pain source does not get worse over time. Another goal of physical therapy will be to strengthen muscle groups that support aching or painful parts of the body so that real healing can take place.

Your choice to pursue physical therapy will not be a quick solution to pain relief, in most cases. Don’t expect to feel 100% overnight, but know that your healing will be healthy, natural, and safe. Your physical therapist�will construct a customized plan that will produce measurable results in pain relief. Because the work will be geared toward curing the source of the pain, you can often eliminate the need for prescription painkillers or opioids.

Ready to find natural pain relief, once and for all?

Kick the opioids with the help of a licensed physical therapist at our clinic. If you suffer from chronic pain and want to know more about how physical therapy can help, contact Premier Therapy Centers today to schedule your first appointment. We’re here to help you ditch prescription medications once and for all.

Reduce Opioid Consumption and Feel Better with Physical Therapy

Long-term opioid consumption is not a good strategy for managing chronic pain. In addition to the risk of addiction, opioids simply alleviate the symptoms (pain) of a larger problem. For very real, measurable improvement over chronic pain, physical therapy has been proven to be a much better option than opioids or other pharmaceutical painkillers. If you are considering opioids for pain relief but would like to explore other options first, contact Premier Therapy Centers to talk with a physical therapist.

Opioid Treatment is Not a Cure

The opioid epidemic in America has gotten so bad in recent years that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is now recommending that patients explore alternative options for pain relief. The CDC recommends that opioids now be considered as a “last option” for only the worst pain cases. Alternative and holistic pain relief methods, including physical therapy, are not as fast as opioids, but these methods do not carry the extreme risks of addiction and overdose.

It’s important that anyone suffering from pain should understand that opioids will not solve the underlying physical problem that is causing the pain. In fact, opioids can make the original problem even worse.

For example, suppose a person is suffering chronic pain several months after having shoulder surgery. The wound from surgery has long since healed, but the pain persists. If that patient relies on opioids to dull the pain, they run the risk of re-injuring their shoulder. Pain is the way the body tells us that something is wrong. With opioids removing the pain, that patient might be using their shoulder muscles incorrectly and ultimately making the underlying problem worse.

If that same patient were to work with a physical therapist on pain relief, they stand a much better chance of eliminating the pain entirely. Their shoulder could be healed through physical therapy, manual therapy, proper exercise, body mechanics and posture work — all without turning to addictive opioid painkillers.

Physical Therapy as a Long-Lasting Pain Cure

Researchers at Stanford University have shown that turning to physical therapy early on, as soon as a person is diagnosed with musculoskeletal pain, reduced the need for opioid pain prescriptions by 7 to 16 percent. Among patients who did require opioids for pain relief, the duration of using painkillers was reduced by as much as 10 percent.

Physical therapy helps patients to cure the source of the pain, rather than ignoring the source by dulling the pain. If a patient suffers from arthritis or any other type of chronic pain, a physical therapist can teach that patient the proper ways to move and utilize key muscle groups so that the pain source does not worsen. Another goal of physical therapy will be to strengthen muscle groups that support aching or painful parts of the body so that real healing can take place.

Your choice to pursue physical therapy will not be a quick solution to pain relief, in most cases. But your physical therapist will construct a customized plan that will produce measurable results in pain relief. Because the work will be geared toward curing the source of the pain, you can often eliminate the need for prescription painkillers or opioids.

If you suffer from chronic pain and want to know more about how physical therapy can help, call Premier Therapy Centers today to schedule your first appointment with a licensed physical therapist.