Chronic pain is one of the large scale health crises facing countless people, and there are very few options for effective treatment. People who experience chronic pain often do not have an injury but instead have nerves that are firing when they shouldn’t be. This creates a sometimes intensely painful sensation in the absence of any obvious tissue damage.
Because there is nothing causing the pain, there is no obvious way to treat chronic pain. Opioid medication can offer short term relief by blocking the painful sensations as they travel to the brain, but the pain returns as soon as the medication runs out. Due to the chemical nature of opioids, they can be extremely habit forming, which also means that they become less effective the longer they are used.
Because of these things, opioid medication is a short term, risky, and expensive way to treat chronic pain. There are many potential alternative treatments, and physical therapy for chronic pain is one of the common options. Physical therapists believe that movement is medicine, which means that exercise and other PT treatments can help relieve chronic pain and help patients return to a functional and full life.