What is Physiotherapy?

Physiotherapy is a registered health care profession. Also known as Physical Therapy, it aims to promote health and well-being through maintaining physical function.

What do Physiotherapists do?

Physiotherapists or Physical Therapists are healthcare providers that help with rehabilitation of specific health concerns or medical conditions through physical therapy after injury, dysfunction or disease. They begin by assessing, diagnosing physical abnormalities and educating. Physiotherapists can then provide specialized treatment and therapeutic exercises.

Physiotherapists balance multiple body systems, restoring physical function.  Physiotherapists help people reduce pain and return to normal movement mechanics after disruptions by focusing on mobility and strength and the return to normal levels of function.

Physiotherapists both rehabilitate and prevent injury. They promote overall health, well-being and fitness.  They help minimize and eliminate pain while helping you stay active.  They are an integral part of the health care team. 

Benefits of Physiotherapy 

Pain Relief 

One of the best benefits of seeing a Physiotherapist is that they can help you relieve pain. Pain can be caused by sports injuries, workplace injuries or simply an active lifestyle.

Physiotherapists have the knowledge and skill to help treat acute and chronic pain. They are experts in determining the root cause of the pain. They will use various methods to treat the cause of your pain, including hands-on and self-directed therapies for pain management. These might include using ice or heat, suggesting some stretching or strengthening exercises, hands-on techniques or recommendations for lifestyle changes to eliminate symptoms.  Your Physiotherapist may also refer you to your primary care doctors to discuss anti-inflammatory medications.

Restoring Proper Function 

By using techniques that restore normal muscle, tendon and joint mobility through manual therapy techniques, Physiotherapy can improve how the body moves, therefore promoting physical activity. When you receive physical therapy including exercise programs that mimic real life situations, you can build your ability to function optimally in your daily life. Muscles at the appropriate length and joints with good mobility all allow your body to move with proper function. Moving with ease will allow you to do the sports and activities you love as well as activities of daily living without pain.

Enhanced functional movement in sport can prevent a sports injury. For those that need enhanced fall prevention, good functional movement may reduce your fall risk and remove the need for any other assistive device.

Function can also be increased in different types of injury, such as following a joint replacement surgery, mastectomy surgery following breast cancer, spinal cord injury or brain injury or restoring proper vestibular functioning following an episode of vertigo or as a part of proper foot care. Exercise can also help in situations of heart and lung disease or as part of an overall diabetes management plan or in the management of Parkinson's Disease.

Mental Health Benefits

Stress is prevalent in daily life. It can affect your body in many negative ways including neck and back pain and fatigue. These can become more serious and affect bigger systems of the body if they persist. One way to manage stress is through Physiotherapy. Your Physiotherapist can relieve stress by correcting muscle imbalances and reducing pain via manual therapy techniques and injury and stress prevention exercise programs. They can also guide you in breathing exercises for stress management. When we remove the chronic pains caused by stress, we feel better, can do more of what we enjoy, and naturally enhance mental health. Exercise can naturally reduce stress and Physiotherapists can guide you in injury and stress prevention exercise programs for home. Your Physiotherapist might suggest you see another licensed medical professional such as a Psychologist or follow up with primary care doctors if your health needs are beyond their scope or if there may be other medical conditions to be addressed.

Improved Strength and Stability 

Strength and stability are important factors in being an athlete, active individual or simply trying to live a healthy life. Not only is strength important in the muscles that move you, but also in the muscles that support you including core and postural stability.

Living an active or athletic life has numerous benefits. Your Physiotherapist can help you achieve these benefits by improving your strength and stability through strengthening exercises designed to challenge your core strength, balance and strength around your joints.

Improved Mobility and Flexibility 

Flexibility in muscles and mobility in joints is the ability to move without restriction. Physiotherapy can help improve both factors to restore better overall movement, therefore increasing performance and decreasing injury. They do this through a combination of Soft Tissue Release or Mobilization and Joint Mobilization.

Soft Tissue Mobilization 

This technique consists of precise pressures applied to soft tissues in specific positions. The purpose is to restore normal flexibility.

The benefits to these treatments are restored tissue length that can decrease pain and improve physical activity as well prevent injury.

Joint Mobilization 

Joint mobilization is another one of the manual therapies that includes techniques to provide specialized management of your joints, applying pressure in the key directions where movement is limited. It is aimed at improving joint mobility, range of motion and reducing pain in injured joints that have become stiff and swollen.

Some conditions that can benefit from joint mobilization are arthritis, joint replacement, age related issues, stress fractures, frozen shoulder, tennis elbow and knee injuries.

Improved Sports Performance and Prevention of Sports Injury

With optimal length in soft tissues, range of motion in joints and function in movements, Physiotherapy can help optimize sports performance and prevent sports related injuries. Physiotherapy can also help your performance and injury prevention through education on proper movement, corrective exercises and taking care of your body for sport.  

Physiotherapy is not just for injuries. An athlete who wants to better their sport performance can do physical therapy to achieve a state of optimal function by receiving hands on therapy to correct any imbalances and exercise therapy to promote optimal strength, stability and mobility

Body Maintenance 

Whether you have a specific injury, are trying to prevent further injury or are just trying to live your best life, through optimal work, life, exercise or sport function, having some form of physical therapy can help. Physiotherapists can help ensure that you are lined up well in all your joints and have proper flexibility, mobility and movement mechanics. We tune up our cars before they breakdown, so why wouldn't we do the same for our bodies?

Physiotherapists can help with how different sports may be affecting your body or the balance in it. It can also help determine if work, life or workouts are creating any tensions that may lead to injuries. Treatment can then be provided and home self-treatment or exercises given to correct any imbalances before they become injuries.

How is Physiotherapy Different at Inertia Physio+

At Inertia Physio+, we pride ourselves on providing Physiotherapy that includes all these great benefits. We do things in an evidence-based way with dedicated time spent to eliminate your injury. We provide:

• One-on-one time with our patients in private treatment rooms, without the use of assistants or machines such as electrical stimulation or transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation (TENS) that are only theorized to work in pain reduction.
• We see a maximum of one to two patients per hour, spending the time that you need on your injury.
• We strive to identify and eliminate the cause of your injury by using proven, effective and research-based means.
• We truly care about you and your injury.
• We offer a range of physical therapists including Physiotherapists, Athletic Therapists and Registered Massage Therapists under one roof.
• We have an aggressive hands-on approach that will allow for the quickest possible return to sport or activity.
• We save you time with online booking and direct billing.