How Rehabilitation Can Help You Heal

The Important Role of Rehabilitation & Therapy

Whether you’ve recently suffered an injury, undergone surgery, or live with a disability—these limitations can make everyday activities feel like a mountain of a task. Fortunately, there are several different types of rehabilitation and therapy that can help to improve your quality of life and get you back to the activities you love.

Physical Therapy

Physical therapy (PT) is a form of movement therapy aimed at helping patients who are recovering from surgery, injuries, or are living with a physical disability that impacts their day-to-day lives. Physical therapists assess and treat these conditions with a combination of in-person therapy, exercises, and education to help patients to recover without complication.

What Physical Therapy Can Help Address

Some of the most common reasons that your primary care doctor may refer you to a physical therapist include:

• Surgery recovery
• Orthopedic injuries
• Persistent back and neck pain
• Spinal injuries
• After a car accident
• Conditions affecting the hands like carpal tunnel
• Neurological conditions like Parkinson’s disease
• Muscular dystrophy
• Cerebral palsy

Benefits of Physical Therapy

Some of the many benefits that patients experience from seeing a physical therapist include:

• Effective pain management
• Improved mobility and range-of-motion
• Improved balance
• Faster recovery times
• Avoiding future complications from an injury

Pelvic Health Rehabilitation

Your pelvic floor is a group of muscles that are found beneath the bladder, large intestines, and uterus. To help you identify these muscles, think of the sensation you feel when you go to the restroom—when you contract these muscles, you are tightening the openings of the urethra, anus, and vagina. When these muscles are released, it allows you to use the restroom and pass gas.

If these muscles become weak, issues with incontinence can develop. Urinary incontinence is the uncontrollable leakage of urine. Roughly one-third of American women live with this pelvic floor issue, which is usually following childbirth or just a symptom of getting older in age.

How Pelvic Health Rehab can Help

Seeing a certified pelvic floor therapist can help develop a treatment plan that can help address your individual nee=ds. Treatment plans for urinary incontinence typically involve a combination of behavioral changes and exercises, such as:

• Strengthening the pelvic floor muscles.
• Bladder training.
• Double voiding the bladder.
• Scheduling times to use the restroom.
• Reducing fluids intake.

Vertigo & Concussion Treatment

Vertigo

Vertigo is a term used to describe dizziness that ultimately causes the affected person to lose their balance. Many people who experience vertigo say it feels like motion sickness or as if the room is spinning.

In most instances, vertigo will go away on its own. But when symptoms persist, seeing a specialist can help you to find some relief. Your specialist will run a series of tests to determine the root cause of your dizzy spells and will most likely use a combination of medication and rehabilitation exercises to treat your condition.

Concussions

Concussions are mild traumatic brain injuries (TBI) that happen when you experience a hit or blow to the body or head that causes the brain to jostle around in the skull. While the symptoms of this “mild” brain injury typically subside on their own, it still has the potential to become serious.

If symptoms persist or even worsen over the course of weeks or months, it may be possible that you have post-concussive syndrome (PCS), which will require treatment from a specialist.

Sports Medicine

Sports medicine specialists are health care providers who have special training in restoring mobility and function in active patients. Sports medicine aims to help address injuries and get patients back to the activities they love while reducing the risk of future complications.

What Sports Medicine Can Help Treat

Some of the most common injuries that sports medicine specialists can help to treat include:

• Sprains
• Strains
• Fractures and breaks
• Knee injuries
• Dislocations
• Shoulder injuries
• Heat-related illnesses
• Concussions

Speech Therapy

Speech therapy is a form of treatment that helps to address common speech and language disorders that can affect someone’s ability to communicate. More often than not, speech-language pathologists use a combination of interactive activities, articulation therapy, and at-home work to help patients to strengthen their communication skills.

What Speech Therapy Can Help to Address

Some of the many speech issues that speech-language pathologists (SLP) can help to address include:

• Limited vocabulary
• Annunciation issues
• Trouble with language comprehension
• Stuttering or stammering
• Speech impediments
• Volume control

Swallow Therapy

Dysphagia is a swallowing disorder that affects an individual’s ability to drink, eat, or even swallow their own saliva. Most people with this disorder experience discomfort when trying to swallow, while others are unable to do it at all.

Fortunately, speech-language pathologists (SLP) can help to address this problem with swallow therapy. With a combination of exercises, positioning strategies, and food modification—patients will be able to minimize their risk of aspiration when swallowing.

If you believe that you can benefit from incorporating rehabilitation or therapy into your routine, be sure to reach out to your primary care provider to discuss your options.

Rehabilitation Services in Bishop, CA

At Northern Inyo Healthcare District, our Rehabilitation Services team takes a very proactive approach to solving problems for our patients and our community at large. Our therapists have ‘a trained eye’ for how people move, work, and play in their environments. We can help to reduce possible injury and minimize future problems that can occur with poor or limited capacity due to patient conditions. Our team’s strength lies in our ability to be flexible and adaptable. We are constantly striving to improve and upgrade our services to provide specialized therapies that most small, rural communities such as ours do not usually have. We also know enough to know when it’s time to refer a patient to more specialized care.

For more information about the rehabilitation services at Northern Inyo Healthcare District or to schedule an appointment, call (760) 873-2155.