Physical therapists’ focus is on helping your body function normally. Age, bad posture, injuries, receiving surgery, or diseases can decrease your body’s ability to move about. Using physical therapy can help your body work at a higher level of efficiency once again.

Arthritis is one such disease that can limit body function, cause pain, and stop a person from doing everyday tasks that they were used to doing with ease.

We’re taking a look at how physical therapy can help individuals who have arthritis manage the disease and reclaim function in their bodies.

Maintaining Motion in Joints

Arthritis or osteoarthritis mostly targets the joints in your body, causing them to stiffen up and cause pain with movement. The joints in our body are what make movement possible for us. Without properly functioning joints, we wouldn’t even be able to raise a finger.

Physical therapy treats this through mobility exercises that target the joints in your body and improve your ability to move back and forth. The treatment works on reducing inflammations around the joints and slowly increasing the angles to move the joints. For some, it may not be possible to recover movement fully, but even a slight improvement in bending angles increases joint function exponentially.

Strengthening Muscles

Osteoarthritis diminishes the cartilage in between connecting bones at the joint. The cartilage helps keep the bones from rubbing against each other and helps keep movement fluid in the body. Without it, the bones rub against each other, and even small amounts of movement can cause immense pain.

A way to counteract this with physical therapy is to strengthen the muscles around the joints where cartilage may have been depleted. Stronger muscles can help support the joints and rely less on the cartilage for movement.

Improve Balance

Another problem that stems from the previous two problems combining is that osteoarthritis can affect a person’s balance. This can be caused by the weakened joints not supporting the body, weak muscles, or decreased body mobility. Adding balance components to exercises can help those suffering from this disease to reduce risks of falling down.

Getting physical therapy can help ease the pain and discomfort of arthritis. If you are looking for a physical therapist in Thomson, GA, consider contacting our team at the Helping Hands Physical Therapy Center and scheduling an appointment for an initial checkup.