Treating Back Injuries and Herniated Discs

After a back injury or disc herniation, many people try physical therapy as a first-line treatment before they consider more invasive interventions.

In the acute stages, the highly trained staff at Beacon Physical Therapy will teach you strategies to manage your low back pain, including: Positioning, use of ice, and pain-free mobility. We will spend time discussing sleep positioning to ensure you are comfortable and able to get a full night’s sleep — which is so important for healing.

We understand that sometimes it will hurt to perform even basic movements like getting out of bed in the morning, so we will review strategies to make it easier to move without aggravating your back.

The manual techniques performed by our advanced functional manual therapists will address localized sources of low back pain in the joints and soft tissues. We will also examine other regions which may be contributing to your symptoms including the pelvic girdle, hips, and thoracic spine. We look at how you are using your body as a whole to address all aspects that are contributing to your pain.

We will perform neuromuscular re-education to ensure the appropriate muscles are firing in the most efficient sequence during various actions. We will recommend therapeutic exercises you can perform at home to promote core stability, strength, and flexibility. These exercises will help to maintain the improvements achieved during your therapy sessions and allow you to work on specific regions of weakness outside of the time spent with your physical therapist.

We will discuss postural and movement strategies to protect your back and prevent re-injury. Our treatment is designed to give you the tools you need to recover from your back injury and avoid the exacerbation of back pain in the future so you are able to perform all of the activities you enjoy without limitation!