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

Time and Muscle Degeneration

Ageing is associated with decreases in both muscle bulk and strength, varying with different muscles in the body and with which side is the dominant one. The loss of the capacity of muscle is greater in men than in women and also in people who are less active physically. Hormone changes, reduced rates of protein production and poor dietary intake can all contribute. Physiotherapists can reverse this process by instituting a resisted exercise programme at the higher intensity level. Older people can respond to muscle training although older muscles do react less strongly to stimulation and take longer to recover and strengthen after exercise sessions.

Older muscles also suffer from a variety of other changes: a reduction in the ability to use energy to produce force; an increase in the fibrous tissue content which can increase stiffness. Along with the reduction in the ability to know where the joints are at any one moment the elderly suffer from slower reactions and poorer muscle control, with weaker and more easily tired muscles. This can lead in very elderly people to a loss of independence and increasing frailty. Perhaps because of its good blood supply, muscle is mostly able to regenerate itself and remain strong.

Disc Pain

It is not possible to diagnose discogenic pain by clinical examination of a patient as there are no specific examination techniques for this condition. Various physiotherapy techniques, such as testing centralisation and peripheralisation, show some connections with having disc-related problems, but do not go as far as to solidly diagnose disc pain. The accepted way of diagnosing this type of problem is to attack the disc itself with techniques such as discography. Discography involves inserting a needle right into the disc and injecting a contrast material which will show up on x-ray examination. The most important point is that the test is only positive if it brings on the typical pain the patient is normally complaining of.

The injected material allows the shape of the nucleus to be seen inside the disc and whether there any problems with it. The discs nearby are also tested and they should be negative if there is to be sufficient confidence in the findings from the symptomatic disc. Internal disc disruption (IDD) is quoted as the underlying pathology responsible for lumbar pain of disc origin, where the internal structure of the disc is altered by fissures occurring radially from the centre towards the outside.