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

Pain Behaviours

When we hurt ourselves it is usual for us to give some indication of the fact that we are injured and these behaviours we exhibit are caused pain behaviours. Typical pain behaviours are non-verbal such as groaning or moaning, grimacing, holding the painful part, lying down, seeking a space away from people or taking painkillers. These behaviours are normal and are a form of communication, letting other people know we have a problem so that they can help us if we require some assistance to manage our injury. These behaviours allow others to assist us more quickly than if we had to think about it and ask them, which would be difficult immediately after a painful injury.

However, such pain behaviours can become chronic, a sort of ingrained habit, and people may use them to communicate daily to people around them about how they are doing that day. This type of communication, being non-verbal, can be misconstrued as it is not clear what is being communicated, leading to incorrect guesses and unwanted actions. Non-assertive communication can be very irritating for those around the person as it is never clear what they want and when something is done it is wrong.

Simple Neck and Shoulder Girdle Exercises

Slow performance of the exercises is important, taking up to five seconds to get to the end of each individual direction of movement. The neck should be moved in each of the standard directions which are: turning the head left and right; side flexing left and right (ear down to same shoulder with face facing forward); bending head forward and back; tucking the head in (a bit like a chicken). It is important to do each movement separately so the maximum range is obtained as the ends of the movement are where the value is in exercising.

Shoulder movements are useful as they may be stiff or the shoulder girdle may not be moving well, and shoulder movements stress the neck to some extent. Shrugging shoulders and rolling them backwards are an example of this movements as are circling of the arms either backwards or forwards. Once the movements are easy then some auto-resisted neck strengthening can be performed with the neck being held in place as one of the hands tries to push it out of position. Holding this for about ten seconds forces the muscles to work hard to maintain the neck position.