Most patients will only seek treatment for pain once it starts to dramatically interfere with their daily life. One of the challenges facing modern healthcare is to change the patient mentality from a curative approach to a preventative approach. The advantages to this are obvious – solve problems before pain starts and save yourself time and money in the long run. Preventing an issue developing in the first place is far cheaper and easier than dealing with a chronic ongoing issue.
For these reasons your Physiotherapist might suggest that you follow a maintenance program once your pain and symptoms are eased in order to prevent a recurrence of the problem. This could be anything from once a month to once every 3 months depending on the cause and history of the problem. Your Physiotherapist is there to get you back to your best and also to keep you there!
Your maintenance in similar to going to the dentist for a check up and clean. You physio will both assess, treat and give exercises that are needed to keep your pain away for good.
This can include:
- Posture assessment
- Muscle length and strength assessment
- Stretching
- Release of tight muscles and stiff joints
- Ergonomic advice about how you are positioned at work and home
- Ongoing exercise in clinic such as Clinical Pilates or personal training by one of our therapists to keep you fit
- The use of posture aids or changing of your pillow as needed
Ask your Physiotherapist for more details about how you can get on board to prevention and even recommend to others about why they might need advice before their problem gets worse.

Simon Fayers

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