It may be hard to believe at first, but some simple physical motions dramatically improve your overall health, wellness, and quality of life!
Stretching exercises are a staple of physical therapy for just that reason. You might be surprised to discover just how many ways stretches can help you. While strength and endurance exercises are also incredibly important, stretching can be especially helpful in helping a patient manage their aches and pains. There are several benefits to stretching, including pain relief, increased flexibility, and functional improvement.
Here are some of the main reasons that our physical therapist might prescribe stretches to enhance your life. To learn more about the benefits of stretching, or to get started with a physical therapist to improve your pain symptoms, contact Nebraska Orthopaedic Physical Therapy today.
Stretching enhances circulation
Stretching plays a large role in benefitting your heart and your musculoskeletal system. In fact, it plays a large role in almost every aspect of your physical abilities. When muscles are tight, they constrict your amount of available oxygen supply and your muscles are essentially left deprived of the necessary nutrients they need.
When you stretch, this process is reversed. Stretching frequently increases the blood flow in your joints and throughout the rest of your body, providing your muscles with the oxygen they need to function at their optimum levels.
Stretching protects your tissues
Before a competition or training session, are you used to seeing athletes go through sets of stretching exercises? Not only are they stretching for the fun of it—they aim to maximize their athletic performance while still shielding themselves from injury. Tissues that are tight, rigid, or normally unprepared for difficulties can tear, resulting in a strain or sprain that puts an early end to your involvement.
Stretches offer a healthy, gentle way to get your tissues ready for action and work out the kinks. You lower the chance of a soft tissue injury as you become more limber. As you act or play, you will find those tissues more capable and receptive. It is just as beneficial to stretch after your activity; it stops your muscles from seizing up and becoming rigid once they are no longer being exercised.
Stretching improves your wellness
Stretching offers many advantages that help keep the body healthier. Stress relief is one of the most important of these. Everyday life throws lots of obstacles at you, and your muscles can be kept under the resulting tension. This leads to tightness, spasms, headaches, neck pain, and chronic discomfort.
Stress also floods your body with “fight or flight” hormones such as cortisone and adrenalin. These imbalances can suppress your immune function, making you more vulnerable to viruses and other diseases. Hypertension is yet another dangerous consequence of chronic stress.
Regular stretches help your body release all that pent-up stress. By relaxing and loosening your muscles, you can maintain better control over your blood pressure, avoid chronic muscle pain, and keep your immune system ready for anything.
Improving Your Pain-Free Mobility
Stretches naturally support physical therapy recommendations such as walking, heat therapy, or massage therapy in increasing blood flow to painful joints and widening your pain-free range of motion.
It’s quite common for a physical therapist to prescribe various stretching exercises to individuals suffering from chronic pain conditions. Stretching takes on special importance when you’ve become less mobile due to issues such as osteoarthritis.
The less you rotate your joints, the greater the chance that some of their lengths will be lost to your muscles and connective tissues. Obviously, this adjustment restricts joint mobility even more and leaves you in even more discomfort.
Chronic pain syndromes often involve tight muscles. Syndromes such as fibromyalgia and its cousin, myofascial pain syndrome, cause muscle knots that limit muscle motion and trigger referred pain to other parts of the body. Regular stretching can help you “untie those” painful knots.
Call our clinic today to learn how a physical therapist can help!
There are correct ways of stretching and incorrect ways. For one thing, various kinds of stretches offer various advantages. Active stretches (in which you move a body part without assistance), passive stretches (in which the body part is retained or supported), or both may be needed in your specific situation.
Stretches can even damage you if you wrongly execute them, so it’s important to make sure you know from the beginning exactly how to move to prevent injuries.
Our physical therapist will help you stretch safely and effectively—so contact Nebraska Orthopaedic Physical Therapy today!
