From debilitating, degenerative diseases such as arthritis to traumatic injuries such as a car accident injury, many conditions are life-altering or can become life-altering if left untreated. Regardless of your age or lifestyle, you shouldn’t have to concede to a lowered quality of life following a serious spine, neck, back or leg injury.
Rather than accept pain and discomfort as “part of life,” consider ways in which you can take a more active approach with your medical treatments and rehabilitation. Most severe and chronic conditions can be improved upon through regular exercise, stretching, healthy eating and chiropractic care.
Reducing Social Isolation
When you regularly suffer from chronic pain, it can drain your energy and your desire to participate in regular social and recreational activities. Even walking around town with friends and family can be challenging with chronic back or joint pain. This also means that you’ll likely be taking time away from your running group, rec sports teams, cooking classes or neighborhood groups.
Initially, you may enjoy the respite from your various engagements and obligations. However, over time, you can start to feel isolated from friends and family and isolated from your regular life and schedule. Solely relying on conservative treatments such as rest and pain medications risks extending this difficult isolation period.
In order to limit the detachment from your regular routine and ideal life, you have to avoid sinking into your pain and allowing your injuries to become debilitating. By choosing active treatment approaches such as physical therapy and chiropractic care, you give yourself the best possible medical treatments to positively influence your health and motivate the healing process.
Getting Back to Work
With around eight hours of your day focused on work, it can be a major shift in your life if an injury is severe enough to take you out of work. Whether it’s the disruption to your daily routine or the financial stress of missing work that has the greater impact on your life, any injury that keeps you from work will generate significant changes. The path you take in your recovery can either extend this change or limit it.
Rehabilitating to Reclaim Independence
As many spine injuries are accompanied by nerve damage, your car accident injury, sports collision or slip and fall can leave you with limitations to your functional capacity. Nerve damage and blocks in the communication between nerves and the brain can impact your fine motor function, making simple tasks such as buttoning a shirt or cooking a challenge. This will require patients to have an aid to some degree to help with daily functions such as cooking, cleaning and bathing. This is likely a major shift and decrease in overall independence.
By working with an occupational therapist, you can reclaim some, if not all, of your fine motor functions, coordination and strength. This is critical for creating meaningful progress in your recovery. Each step forward gets you that much closer to your ideal quality of life.
To reclaim your life and achieve your optimal health after a severe injury, work with the trusted team of chiropractors at Peralta Chiropractic. You can schedule your consultation today at (214) 942-3700.