Musculoskeletal injuries

Musculoskeletal injuries are injuries that happen when our muscles, tendons, ligaments or bones are damaged.  Examples include a bone fracture, muscle strain, or tendinitis. These types of injuries can be caused by a traumatic event (such as a fall or car accident), by a pre-disposition due to an underlying condition, or from chronic low grade stress over a long period of time (like repetitive postures or movements). 

These types of injuries can also include peripheral nerve irritation and damage as well. Peripheral nerves are nerves that start at the spinal cord and travel throughout the body and give power and sensation to our muscles, skin, and virtually all other tissues in the body. These nerves can be collateral damage during an injury. This irritation can be mild, like when you start feeling light tingling into your hands when sleeping in one position for an extended period of time, or it can be more serious like when a slipped disc presses on a nerve causing extreme pain and dysfunction down the leg. Nerve irritation is common with a lot of musculoskeletal injuries, but it doesn’t mean that the nerve is injured beyond repair. There might be a simple solution to nerve irritation like simply checking your posture at your work-station. Other injuries may take longer to resolve, but are still often due to positions and postures we perform from day to day. 

As just discussed, musculoskeletal injuries can be short lived or persist for years. When we leave some of these seemingly mild aches and pains to improve on their own, oftentimes they accumulate and the body starts to adapt in ways that are harmful in the long run. The body is actually quite effective at finding alternative ways to move so we can get the job done, but a lot of these new patterns weren’t meant to be long term. We can’t always avoid certain movement patterns in life, but we can do our best to use healthy movement patterns whenever possible. This can mean using healthy movement in the moment such as correcting posture or correctly lifting a heavy object off the floor. This can also mean doing healthy movements to oppose your day to day movements such as taking a small portion of your day to do some corrective exercises. 

A mobile physiotherapist can help you understand what's causing your injury to persist, how long it might take to heal, and what steps to take to get back to where you want to be. As physiotherapists, we use a variety of techniques to help your body ‘remember’ or ‘re-learn’ how to move. Hands on techniques are used to help the body relax, reduce stress, and help reposition the tissue. Some of these techniques include  massage, assisted stretching, manipulation of joints, and nerve glides. Additional modalities can also be used to reduce the pain response and inflammation such as a TENS machine and acupuncture for example. Exercises are then taught to reinforce and maintain the hands on work as your body heals. It also helps to prevent future occurrences or flare ups of the same injury. Last but not least, our best tool is education! The more you know about your injury, the better equipped you will be to manage it.  If you have any questions about how a mobile physiotherapist can assist your recovery, please give us a call!