Water literally makes up the majority of our bodies and the world around us. Still, people may find it hard to believe that physical therapists can use water-based therapy to reduce pain.
Fortunately, they can. Physical therapists commonly call water-based therapy aquatic therapy or hydrotherapy. As you might suspect, hydrotherapy involves working with your physical therapist in a pool filled with water. Often, the pool is heated. Why might your physical therapist use aquatic therapy to help you when you’re in pain? There are several key reasons.
Four reasons physical therapists may use aquatic therapy when their patients are in pain
From lower back pain to knee injuries to hip osteoarthritis, physical therapists can help you address many painful issues. They can often use hydrotherapy to do so, too. Here are some reasons why they might use hydrotherapy to help with your painful issue:
- Water is supportive — When you’re doing physical therapy outside of water, you have to spend a lot of effort holding yourself up. This effort can be too much for people with certain injuries or medical conditions. It can even lead to increased pain. Water has a force called buoyancy that helps support body weight. This makes it easier for patients to support themselves while working with a physical therapist.
- Aquatic therapy puts less strain on injuries — Making it easier to balance isn’t the only benefit that water’s buoyancy can offer. It can also help reduce strain on injured or painful muscles, tendons, ligaments and joints. This means that hydrotherapy can offer the pain reduction and functional improvements of land-based therapeutic exercises while placing less stress on your injured body.
- Hydrotherapy uses natural resistance — Strengthening techniques are a big part of many physical therapy plans. Often, these techniques rely on equipment like hand weights or resistance bands. However, maintaining good form with such equipment can add stress to an already injured or painful body part. We’ve already mentioned how hydrotherapy can help reduce stress on healing body parts. But this benefit is enhanced by the natural resistance that water provides. As a result, hydrotherapy can allow you to strengthen your body without the stress associated with exercise equipment.
- It can reduce pain — What is the biggest reason your physical therapist may have you do aquatic therapy? It can help reduce your pain. Natural resistance and support, reduced strain and improved blood flow are all hydrotherapy staples that play a role in this ability. Hydrotherapy’s ability to reduce pain is supported by medical studies. One fibromyalgia study found that hydrotherapy helped patients reduce their pain by 40% on average in four weeks.
Border TS offers aquatic therapy that can help with your pain
Keen to see if aquatic therapy can help reduce your pain? You can work with our Border Therapy Services team to find out. We can start by doing a free screening on you to determine the source of your pain. Then, our physical therapists can create a personalized treatment plan for you that may mix aquatic therapy sessions with other techniques, such as:
- Therapeutic exercises.
- Manual therapy.
- Functional dry needling.
- Virtual physical therapy.
Contact our team today for more information about how we can help address your pain or to schedule your initial appointment.