Manual Therapy in Bethesda
Skilled, Hands-On Therapy
Manual therapy, including joint mobilizations and manipulations, is integral to physical therapy practice. The objective of manual therapy at Bethesda Physiocare® is to reduce persistent pain, increase range of motion, and help patients return to their jobs and recreational activities by restoring optimal and pain-free postures and movements.
Get to know us and our other services by calling our physical therapy clinic in Bethesda at (301) 656-5613.
How Manual Therapy Helps
Manual therapy is intended to provide any combination of the following benefits:
Modulate pain
Improve joint range of motion
Reduce soft tissue inflammation/swelling
Increase blood flow
While manual therapy has been seen as having physical benefits, it has also been found to have psychological, biochemical, and neurophysiological advantages. Basically, this practice helps patients heal in several ways, making it an invaluable choice for our patients and physical therapists alike.
As leaders in manual therapy, we notice that experience makes all the difference in each successful treatment. Our PTs rely on decades of education, experience, and training to treat our patients, providing pain relief and peace of mind through our work.
Our manual therapy techniques include the following:
Stretches
Joint Manipulation/Mobilization
Massage
Is Manual Therapy Right for You?
While having a stigma of only being for people with serious injuries, most people will be surprised to find that anyone can benefit from manual therapy in some way. From simple discomfort to complex conditions like TMJ and Ehlers-Danlos syndromes, our practice can be an excellent option for any sort of affliction.
Manual therapy can also be a preventative measure, especially if you want to prevent injury from derailing your lifestyle. For complex conditions, it is used in tandem with other services to create a personalized treatment plan befitting the rehabilitation goal in mind.
The History and Philosophy of Manual Therapy
Dating back thousands of years, manual therapy has been helping people since as early as Hippocrates’ time to treat chronic pain and scoliosis. Techniques that have evolved since then are used by a number of health care providers, including physical therapists and chiropractic, osteopathic, naturopathic, and some allopathic physicians. The underlying outlook and clinical guidelines on how to perform the techniques may differ between the various professions.
Despite differences of opinion, several guidelines under international medical organizations have determined that there is a high level of evidence for spinal manipulation and manual therapy. These include the 1994 Agency for Health Care Policy and Research (AHCPR) Guidelines, the 2017 Chenot’s et al. German Disease Management Guideline1, and the JOSPT Low back pain clinical practice guideline (2012)2. For example, patients with acute low back pain (LBP), subacute, and chronic pain syndrome, can benefit from manual therapy.
What to Expect from Our Physical Therapists
For all of our new patients, we spend time trying to understand the specifics of your pain history and experience. Then our team will conduct an examination and assessment to document the extent of your pain experience. We assess it based on factors such as:
Balance
Mobility
Strength
Coordination
Muscle Function
Once we understand the extent of your pain, we use gentle manual therapy techniques to manipulate the pain points. From there, we will craft a personalized pain management plan to lessen or eliminate the affliction being addressed.
Experienced Manual Therapy in Bethesda
Bethesda Physiocare® uses manual therapy along with other physical therapy treatment methods to provide the best results for our patients.
Schedule an appointment with our Bethesda physical therapist team today by calling (301) 656-5613 to start your journey to a pain-free life.
