what should a home care provider really be doing?
How To Get Physical Therapy When You're Stuck In Your Home
Adrian Cano
Physical therapy is often recommended or outright prescribed by doctors and nurses. Whether you've recently gone through an injury, surgery, or something else that's made it difficult to get around, physical therapy can help. However, if leaving the home isn't an option for you right now, you might think that you're out of luck until you can leave. However, the reality is that you should still seek out physical therapy ASAP. Here's why it's so important and what you can do to make it a reality for yourself.
Why Physical Therapy Is So Important
Physical therapy is extremely important in rebuilding the body after a trauma of any kind. Physical therapy not only helps you to rebuild muscle and bone mass, but it's also focused on teaching you how to use your body properly.
After significant injuries or other kinds of trauma, many people cope with their problems by working around them. For example, if your leg is injured, you might limp, or if your shoulders are painful, you might let them slope instead of holding them in a proper posture. However, these types of behaviors can overwork muscles and tendons elsewhere in your body, resulting in an even worse condition that makes it harder to perform daily tasks.
Why You Shouldn't Skip It
In addition to the risk of injuring other parts of your body, you're also at a high risk of losing more muscle mass and bone mass over time without physical therapy.
Launching into a full-fledged workout regimen is usually impossible when you're dealing with a problem like this, and every day that you're not moving around and using your body, you're losing more strength. Rather than getting better, you can easily get worse to the extent that a new injury could be catastrophic, resulting in broken bones, or it can simply make it impossible for you to get out of the house to seek the physical therapy that you needed in the first place.
What to Do
While physical therapy was once only available on medical centers and hospitals, that's no longer the case. In cases like yours, whether you're staying home because you're physically incapable of leaving the house, or even because of the recent COVID-19 pandemic, someone can come to you to give you the help you need.
In this instance, what you need is an in-home physical therapist. They'll come over several times per week — or as often as recommended by your physician — and will help teach you and walk you through the exercises and routines that will get you back on your feet. This will ensure that your body learns how to use its muscles and tendons the correct way, without compensating, and that your entire body becomes stronger and more steady in everything you do.
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If you have a home health care worker in your home, you know very well how helpful he or she can be. What you may not know is what all that worker is supposed to be doing while in your home. Does the service provide general housecleaning services? Should he or she be doing laundry for the one that they are caring for? My blog will show you what services may or may not be offered by home health care services so that you can look further into what the service you have hired is supposed to be doing in your home.