The case for mechanical, musculo-skeletal Physiotherapy

The importance of finding a good physiotherapist. Come and see Kevin, your local Mapperley physio 

I don’t think I’ve every blogged about Physiotherapy before,https://www.nottmphysio-colonics.co.uk/physiotherapy.html and I don’t know why because it’s what I did for almost 15 years before colon hydrotherapy took over my life, and it’s what my husband Kevin does for a living too! The Nottingham Physio & Colonic Clinic is located at Plains View Surgery, 57 Plains Road, Mapperley, Nottingham. NG3 5QR 0115 9676699

Physiotherapists sometimes get a bad reputation.  So many people complain about how, when they went to Hospital for NHS physiotherapy treatment, it was completely ineffective – it just didn’t work.  Very often when asked about their experience, they just say “Rubbish. It didn’t work. Waste of time”. Well of course it didn’t work.  You go to your GP. He refers you to the Physio Dept at the local Hospital. Then what!? You wait 3 months for an appointment to come through, (by which time your pain has either gone away by itself, or turned chronic) you turn up at Hospital, to be waiting around 3 hours, then when you get in to see the Physio, you get about 10 – 15 minutes of exercises.  No massage, no heat treatment, no manipulation, no ultrasound, no interferential, just exercises.  Absolute waste of time. It’s not always the Physiotherapist that’s at fault – it’s the SYSTEM. You can’t compare this experience to the experience you should get from a Physiotherapist in private practice, who generally have more time to spend listening and giving you a more comprehensive treatment.

Many Physiotherapists are also almost afraid to touch their patients for fear of litigation, so they absolve the responsibility onto the patient through exercise therapy.  Now don’t get me wrong, exercises are a very important part of musculo-skeletal rehabilitation, but not at the beginning of the treatment programme, when a person has acute or chronic muscle tension, trigger points and adehsions.  Try and stretch a chronically tight muscle with exercise, and you’re heading for trouble – torn fibres, and more inflammation and pain. The exercise should be done when the muscles have been relaxed off with manual therapies.

Put some heat packs on the affected muscles, give them some massage, put some warming ultrasound on them and, guess what, the muscles begin to relax, taking the pressure off nerves, blood vessels and joints, and the pain begins to diminish.  Not rocket science is it?  Sometimes a small adjustment to the joint is necessary to free it up.  Perhaps a little acupuncture to ‘inactivate’ trigger points. Patient feels like a new person.

There’s also been research done that would suggest massage and ultrasound is not effective at treating musculo-skeletal pain.  Some Hospital Physio Departments followed these guidelines and no longer offer massage and ultrasound. Well, I don’t know who does this research, but it’s a load of rubbish.  Of course massage works.  It’s been around for 1,000’s of years and something that’s been around that long, must be good.  The same for ultrasound therapy.  A very useful piece of equipment to help break down adhesions, knots and trigger points in muscles, but also helpful in calming down inflamed areas too.  Ultrasound is good for chronic and acute muscle problems. Ultrasound therapy is also extremely effective in treating leg ulcers through granulation, but that’s another blog for another day.

I’m not criticising the Physiotherapy profession.  Many of them do fantastic work. Look at what the Rehab Physios are doing with the injured soldiers coming back from Afghanistan.  I’m afraid though, more often than not, good quality musculo-skeletal treatment in Physio Departments in Hospitals can sometimes be sadly lacking.  You will get much better treatment from Private Physios and from good Sports Massage/Remedial  Massage therapists too, but you will have to pay for it.

There’s one thing I can assure you of. When you come to Nottingham Physio & Colonics Clinic for physiotherapy, you won’t just get exercises.  You will be properly examined, and treated according to your condition.  That will probably (almost definitely) include some deep tissue massage, gentle spinal manipulations, heat therapy, acupuncture and ultrasound. We don’t do ‘body-polishing’. We do deep tissue massage. It can be uncomfortable at times. It’s important to get deep into the muscle to break down the contracted fibres and free up the muscle, but we usually put heat packs on the muscles before we do the deep massage. This helps relax the muscles prior to the massage. Ultrasound therapy afterwards will help prevent any post-treatment soreness.

If you want to have a chat with Kevin about how his style of Physiotherapy can help you, contact him by email: kevinbooth@btinternet.com, or phone him on 0115 9676699.