Are You Suffering From Complex and Persistent Pain In Chislehurst or Dulwich?
Wellness In Motion is here to help!
Wellness in Motion specialises in treating chronic or persistent complex pain presentations in addition to dealing with acute injuries. Chronic pain refers to pain that persists for more than three months after an injury or arises in situations, such as back problems, where pain occurs without an obvious reason and doesn’t improve despite the use of painkillers and sometimes injections. Often, patients undergo scans and X-rays that do not reveal anything that changes the management of their condition. This can result in a cycle of constant pain, decreased fitness and activity levels, and a decline in mental health.
Mentally, chronic pain takes a toll on well-being by causing frustration, irritability, anxiety, and depression. Coping with constant pain can overwhelm individuals, affecting their ability to concentrate, make decisions, and maintain emotional stability. Sleep disturbances are common, as the pain often interferes with sleep quality, leading to fatigue and further exacerbating mental health challenges.
If you’d like to find out more information about the cost and availability of our services click the button below to complete a short form, a member our team will then reach out.
People facing chronic pain therefore attempt various methods to alleviate their symptoms, but many approaches are ineffective and come with their own risks. For instance, over-the-counter pain medications like ibuprofen, paracetamol and codeine can provide temporary relief for acute pain but may not be effective for chronic pain management. Over-reliance on these painkillers can also lead to side effects or tolerance issues over time.
Many hope that reducing their physical activity and resting the affected area will provide relief but prolonged inactivity can lead to muscle weakness and stiffness. Avoiding activity altogether can hinder rehabilitation and recovery.
When people do seek help from the NHS or other private practices, their experiences are often negative, and are dissuaded from pursuing physiotherapy. Chris and the team here believe that many patients are let down by not being properly assessed initially and not being listened to. We take a thorough history in the clinic to identify all possible contributors to persistent pain, understand why it hasn’t improved, and evaluate what treatments have failed in the past.
If you have questions about our services or would just like more information, click the button below to complete a short form, a member of our team will then call you with the answers you need.
A significant issue in Britain is the lack of hands-on treatment for patients having NHS physiotherapy, partly due to perceptions that its effects are short-term. While it is true hands-on treatment alone provides temporary symptom relief, at Wellness in Motion it is considered a vital part of the overall care package. It is challenging to exercise through pain without any relief, but over a course of treatment, patients often experience longer periods between sessions where symptoms are more manageable. Although achieving a 100% result is not always possible, many patients who have suffered from chronic pain for years make a full recovery because they finally receive the right treatment and support.
Dry needling, in particular, helps dampen pain circuits in the brain. When the brain perceives that an area is injured and painful this prompts protective muscle tension and compels us to rest. We are conditioned to believe that these signals are always accurate and trustworthy however there is often a disparity between how much pain an individual perceives and how much actual tissue damage there is. A patient may have sustained a back injury after falling down a flight of stairs and it would be entirely appropriate to feel a lot of pain and not move until having been checked in A&E to rule out fractures or nerve damage. Contrast this with a patient who ‘throws their back out’ picking up a tissue off the floor (a real-life example!). In this latter scenario the patient concerned may well feel as much pain as the staircase faller but it’s unlikely that any significant tissue damage has occurred picking up a light object. Similarly, if the staircase patient has not sustained a serious injury i.e. soft-tissue damage only, it is not uncommon for the pain-levels to remain high for months or years later even though it is acknowledged that most soft tissue problems heal within three months. Often these pain signals are amplified by poor (often well-meaning!) advice such as “You must rest until it stops hurting” or by downloading some random exercises off the internet. Hands-on treatment can help switch off these unhelpful pain circuits if pain is persisting for more than three months after an injury or earlier in cases where the pain systems have been stimulated despite no obvious injury having occurred. In these scenarios pain is no longer a helpful signal but rather a nervous system issue that hasn’t resolved itself.
The team at Wellness in Motion break this cycle using a combination of treatment, exercises, and self-management at home, aiming to do so without drugs and injections. For the small number of patients who do not respond to these treatments, we refer to top-level pain specialists in London. Wellness in Motion believes in a hierarchy of interventions, starting with quality assessment, hands-on treatment, and targeted rehabilitation first then resorting to prescription drugs, injections or surgical interventions only if progress is not being made. The majority of patients respond well to these lower cost, lower risk procedures with only a few needing further intervention. All of our therapists at Wellness in Motion are first contact practitioners and as such have undergone extensive training in identifying serious pathology and at no point would there be any delay in referring patients for further investigation should this be necessary.
Are you unsure if physiotherapy is right for you? Take advantage of our FREE discovery sessions which help identify your issues and if we can provide help!
** Please note there is no treatment given during one of our discovery sessions. These sessions are designed to evaluate your needs and ensure we can offer the help you need.
