Physiotherapists in Kensington treat many different conditions including the issues profiled below.

Overdoing and Avoiding in Chronic Pain

Chronic pain can lead to significant levels of distress and disability as sufferers struggle to maintain their activity levels in the face of high levels of pain. People vary enormously in their responses to a chronic pain problem but the two most obvious approaches are avoiding and overdoing. Avoiding is much less common the person doing less and less with time, avoiding activities as they fear damage to their back. With time this evolves into an almost complete avoidance of activity as the person rests for the majority of the day, with others typically taking over all the domestic tasks and often many of the personal ones too. This leads to high levels of unfitness and deconditioning.

The other approach, more common overall, is to keep pushing on with activities because they have to be done, and then cope with the consequences afterwards. These people feel guilty at not being able to do the things they should and when they wake up to a better day than normal they go for it, doing all the things they have wanted to do until the pain increase stops them and then is much worse for several days, forcing them to rest.

Anterior Cruciate Ligament Sprain (ACL)

The anterior cruciate ligament is one of the four major ligaments of the knee joint which stabilise the joint against inappropriate movement in all directions. The ACL crosses the joint from above to below and prevents the tibia (shin bone) from slipping forwards under the condyles of the femur or thigh bone. It is a very strong ligament and very important for knee stability in activities and sports. It is most commonly injured in non-contact situations when the person is changing direction quickly such as in cutting or side-stepping in sport but can also be injured in tackles and other interactions involving another person.

Many people who have had an ACL injury report that they heard their knee go .pop. at the time, accompanied by a severe pain and an inability to weight bear on the limb. The knee typically swells up very quickly, within minutes or hours, as it fills with blood from the injury due to the rupture of the blood vessels in the ligament. Initial treatment is to splint the knee and perhaps remove some of the blood from the joint by a needle. Due to the risk of arthritis developing, the main treatment is almost always surgical reconstruction of the ligament.