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

Falls and Healthy Bones

Falling in adults is an important matter with involvement of around 30% of people over sixty-five years old and half of those over eighty-five years. There are significant risks to falling for elderly people, with many much older people dying and or suffering loss of mobility or other problems. Ninety percent of hip fractures are caused by falling and this comes with a very high cost both personally and financially. Only twenty percent of people who fracture their hip recover well enough to attain their previous level of functional abilities which includes walking. There may be many reasons for a person falling and the evidence for the many interventions proposed being effective is not very good.

Physiotherapists prescribe exercise programmes as part of their main arsenal of skills, with good evidence that well designed programmes which include training balance and strength can be effective at reducing falls in the community. Patient access to assessment and treatment by a physiotherapist is however variable in the UK, with hip fracture patients likely to receive this (due to admission to hospital) but patients with non-hip fractures are much less likely to receive this even when admitted. Physios have a much greater role in this matter which they have not taken up.

Disc Nutrition and Posture

The supply of nutritional substances to the inner parts of the discs is in general poor and a lack of this supply is connected with degenerative disc changes. Large differences in the compression forces inside an intervertebral disc can be generated by relatively small changes in posture. These changes have correspondingly large effects on fluid flow out of and into discs and on diffusion of metabolic agents into the disc. The effectiveness of the transport of these materials depends on how far they have to travel from the nearest blood vessel which is usually in the vertebral endplate (top or bottom of the disc).

When bending, the back of the disc walls is stretched and the fronts are compressed, with stretching making the wall thinner and therefore more easily crossed by nutrients. This brings more food supply into the central area of the rear of the disc, the area which receives least nutrition. Compression from movement also squeezes water from the disc and as it returns when the pressure is relieved the incoming water brings nutrients along with it. Changes from a lordosis to a flexed position regularly increase the fluid flow in and out of the disc, encouraging the transport of nutrients.