Physiotherapy for Back and Neck Pain

When you see a physiotherapist at Remedy Wellness Centre, you can expect an in depth assessment to find the root cause of your back and neck pain. Your physiotherapist may use techniques to mobilize your spinal joints, and will give you advice on how to best maintain your thoracic mobility, essential for a healthy low back and neck. The thoracic spine (mid back) can often become immobile, which can cause compensatory hypermobility and strain in the lower back and neck. Back pain can be driven by tight hamstrings, underactive or tight quads, poor core engagement, unstable SI joints and a long list of other things. We have the tools to figure out where it's coming from so we can fix it and teach you how to take better care of yourself. No need to waste time doing stretches and exercises that aren't really helping you. 

Using manual therapy and other treatment techniques like myofascial release, IMS, and MET, your physiotherapist will help you to regain lost mobility, provide you with instructions on how to achieve ideal postural alignment, and prescribe therapeutic exercises that will support your spine. Patient education is very important to us and we like to empower our patients to take part in the treatment process by prescribing exercises and stretches to be done at home. 


 TIPS FROM OUR PHYSIOTHERAPIST

• Stay flexible. Optimal spinal health means having flexibility and ease of movement in all directions. If your mid-back has limited rotation movement, more load and stress can be transferred to your lower back, neck or other body parts. You can check your rotation by sitting in a chair with your arms crossed across your stomach; with a flexible spine, you should be able to turn equally to the right and left, and see behind yourself easily. 

 

• Vary positions at work. We are not meant to sit all day. Sitting at computers and desks all day puts increased pressured on your spine. After about 30 minutes of sitting, you should get up and walk around to keep the flow of blood and fluids to the spine. You should also bend forward, backward, sidebend and rotate through your whole spine.  Move your arms around in circles as big as you can without pain to get the shoulder joints moving. Squat down and get back up if you can to mobilize the hips, knees and ankles. Take all your joints through their full range of motion to keep them flexible and loose. You can also set up a standing workstation to vary your position while working at the computer. You should make sure your work desk and computer are set up properly for sitting or standing, to encourage optimal posture. There is a blog post here about desk ergonomics that you may want to check out.

 

• Keep the core in check. Regain optimal control of your deep spinal muscles (core) following an episode of neck or back pain with regular exercise to strengthen the core. Learning how to activate your core properly is something you and your physio can work on here at Remedy Wellness Centre. Healthy core engagement can be very beneficial for spinal health, but over doing it or clenching can make things worse. You don't want constant resting tension either. You want that happy middle ground. We can help you find it.