“Can Physiotherapy be used as maintenance?”​

“I regularly suffer from back pain. Does it make sense to visit a physiotherapist every month as maintenance? Can I prevent pain with this?”

-Question by Francias

Mark Chen, physiotherapist

Maintenance treatment is certainly a possibility. Your physical therapist can make sure that your muscle tension is under control, that the joints have good mobility and can give you exercises.

However, it is even better to take a good look at why you regularly suffer from your back. The back is perhaps the most complex part of our musculoskeletal system and almost everyone will experience back pain at some point in their life. Often a lot can be explained from your lifestyle. For example, sitting a lot and walking too little is a factor that is often overlooked, but has a major influence on the functioning of the back.

Unwanted changes in the body

The constant shortening of the hip flexors when working behind a desk for example, changes the strength-to-length ratio of the muscles surrounding the hips and pelvis.

These have a direct influence on how you move. Think of this “strength-length ratio” as a tug-of-war between the muscles. Constantly both teams work equally hard to keep everything straight. A lot of sitting, incorrect lifting, a one-sided load during a hobby or sport (tennis, darts, golf) can cause one of the “teams” to get more or less power than the other, which makes things skewed.

Of course there can be many other causes. For example, I often hear complaining of having a “weak back”. I’m not a big fan of that expression myself because it implies that it’s something that can’t be helped. After having seen hundreds if not thousands of cases, it still amazes me how little control most of us have over our backs. And we have so much that we depend on it for!

To return to your question: It’s a high return on investment to visit a physiotherapist as a preventive measure, but do not go only to get massaged or cracked. Look further.

Try to put together the puzzle pieces that cause your back problems and look for a long-term solution together with the physiotherapist.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.