Physiotherapy’s Role In Health - Going beyond pain and pursuing performance
For many people physiotherapy is all about pain, and it is easy to see why. For the vast majority of people that book themselves into see a physio or are referred to see one, their reason is pain. This is the issue that they have that they are hoping to solve. An increase in pain, or a feeling of pain during an everyday activity that always felt fine is often the trigger that makes a person take action. However, is a physiotherapy completed when the pain is gone?
So if a physiotherapist’s work begins because of pain, does that mean that it stops when the pain is resolved? Many would say so but it depends on how you view your own person health. If you were to take a black and white approach to how you think of your health, you would label yourself as healthy or unhealthy.
For most of us, we associate ‘unhealthy’ with pain, signs, symptoms and this makes sense. Those experiences are all ways that our bodies can communicate with us. A symptom is our physical self telling us that something is not quite right and we need to take action - much like the person calling a physio when their knee starts hurting as they walk down the stairs. If we don’t act then signs and symptoms worsen and we can develop conditions or disease. If we do then hopefully we resolve the issue and the symptom goes away. So what about the flip side?
What would you associate with being healthy? Would it be based around doing what physical or social things you want to do? Would you measure it against metrics that society has calculated eg. Walking 10k steps per day and eating 30 different vegetables a week? Would you measure your health by comparing yourself to your colleagues, family or former self? Would you take a performance related blood test, pay for a lactate threshold test or conduct biological age testing? Or would you simply view healthy as the absence of disease, pain and unpleasant symptoms?
But if we view health as a spectrum
Hopefully we can see that health is not black or white. It is far more complex than labelling someone as healthy or unhealthy. There are varying degrees of each and they lie on the same spectrum. So let’s look at things with a new lens, and consider this:
0 is at one end and at the other we have 100
We all lie somewhere between those two points. 0 represents the lowest level of health possible, and in reality this is death. 100 is peak health and performing at our optimal level. In the middle of the two, we have 50 which is neither good or bad. You don’t have signs or symptoms of illness or disease, but you are not performing at as well as you could.
If we circle back to the original question, ‘is physio done when the pain is resolved’? I would argue no, not by a long shot. By resolving pain we have helped a person to move up that 0 - 100 spectrum and reached a point where they are without pain and symptoms. They have returned to midpoint. This point between unhealthy and healthy. But we have not helped them achieve what is possible, a state where they are performing at their peak.
A physiotherapist can play a vital role in helping someone to continue moving up this spectrum of health. They are experts in physical function and through physiotherapy exercises we can help someone to build strength, improve their physical efficiency or even combat stress.
