When do you need to visit a physical therapist? Not when you have just knocked yourself against a chair or some other piece of furniture and a tiny bump has sprouted in the elbow area. But, you will definitely need to visit a physical therapist when the pain in the elbow area refuses to go away even after you have been applying hot and cold packs for 3-4 days. There are also several other instances that require that you schedule an appointment with a physical therapist at the earliest convenience; some of them are listed below:

Back Pain: All those who are afflicted by pain in their upper, middle, or lower back regions testify to this—your life virtually comes to a standstill when you have an aching back! A physical therapist not only alleviates the pain with his varied treatment methods—physical or manual therapy—but also makes you undergo a muscle and joint strengthening program to ensure that you regain strength, mobility, and flexibility in this region of your body and keep pain from recurring.

•Carpal Tunnel Syndrome: You may not know that you have developed this condition, but if there is a niggling pain and persistent numbness in your fingers or hands or swelling that refuses to subside, rush to a physical therapist in Illinois.

•Injuries: If you are recovering from any sort of injury, specifically auto accident, sports and workplace injuries, you should visit a physical therapist to undergo therapy sessions that will aid complete recovery and help to restore strength, mobility of the joints, and flexibility of the muscles in the afflicted regions of the body. These sessions may consist of stretching and strengthening exercises and also manual therapy rounds.

Apart from the above-mentioned instances, you need to visit a physical therapist when you have been diagnosed with fibromyalgia, herniated disc, spinal stenosis, osteoporosis, spondylolisthesis, and disc degeneration.

If you don't visit a physical therapist and you have suffered from one of the above issues, you can expect a life of pain from the injury that will progressively get worse and harder to treat. More often than not, an untreated injury will not be able to be treated if left untouched for a relatively long time.

Author's Bio: 

This article was written by Ana Vinikov for Global Pain & Spine Clinic of Niles, IL. Global Pain & Spine Clinic is a pain management clinic that specializes in physical therapy as well as chiropractics and acupuncture. For more information or to schedule an appointment, visit GlobalClinic.com.