If you are searching for local County of Merseyside physiotherapy practices, the clinics below are recommended. Please click on the practice name links for detailed descriptions of each clinic and the conditions in which they specialise.
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Physiotherapists in Merseyside treat many different conditions including the condition profiled below.
Severe Arm Pain and Physiotherapy
Neck pain is very common but, like sciatica in the leg, severe arm pain is uncommon but distressing for the sufferer. Nerve root conditions are caused typically by compression or inflammation from a disc protrusion near to the nerve exit in the spinal column or by bony encroachment on the same areas in older people. Patients complain of severe pain in the arm, often worse below the elbow and into the hand, with a surging quality which is very unpleasant. Typically patients are not able to sleep with this so appear tired and miserable due to the loss of sleep and constant severe pain.
Physiotherapy management starts with a careful assessment of the neck and arm but this may be severely limited by the severity of the pain and the irritability, the ease by which the condition can be stirred up by minimal input. Initial treatment is aimed at pain relief with analgesia, restriction of aggravating activities and a collar at night to restrict neck movements. Once the pain begins to settle the patient is encouraged to start gentle exercises or the physiotherapist performs mobilisation techniques to put mechanical stresses through the joint to start the process of restoring the area's capacity to cope with stress.
Simple Neck Exercises . Three
Whilst simple neck exercises are extremely valuable to correct postural abnormalities, lengthen shortened structures and relieve painful neck problems it is important to use the correct technique to get the best from them. Incorrect technique can make the exercises effectively useless or even worsen the problem or cause injury. There are four basic directions of neck exercises: front and back (flexion and extension); side to side (side flexion); rotation; retraction (tucking the head in a bit like a chicken does when it walks). All these movements need to be performed to put the cervical structures through their full movement.
The structures which make up the body do not respond well to fast movement or great forces applied in very short time periods. The aim with simple neck exercises is to get the joints to the extremes of their movement and give a gentle end range stretch to the anatomy. To achieve this the movement needs to be steady and slow, without jerking, and held at the end with a bit of extra effort for a few seconds. It is also useful to do just one movement at a time, the common behaviour of rotating the neck in large circles being both more likely to aggravate the joints and not getting the full movement of any of them.
Physiotherapists in Merseyside have contributed some of the many articles on this site such as the one extracted below.
The thyroid gland produces hormones and is one of the endocrine glands, placed in the anterior neck just below the voice box and is the source of the hormone thyroxine. The thyroid hormones are secreted into the blood and are important in controlling the metabolism and contribute to the normal function of all the body's cells. The thyroid gland can produce and store more thyroid hormone than the body needs at any period and so a patient may not need to take thyroid replacement hormone if only a proportion of the thyroid gland is removed.Thyroid hormone replacement tablets will be necessary for the rest of a person's life if the whole thyroid gland is removed. The parathyroid glands are four very small glands about as big as grains of rice and attached to the thyroid. Parathyroid hormone is secreted by these glands which are involved in the regulation of calcium concentration in the blood. It is essential to have normal calcium in the blood for a healthy skeleton and general health. Sur...
