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

Lumbar Stenosis

There are many painful syndromes which involve the lumbar spine, with the discs, ligaments, joints, muscles and nerves all implicated in pain production. Older people can present with symptoms which indicate a stenosis of their vertebral canal. The vertebral or spinal canal runs down the back and carries the spinal cord, allowing the nerve roots to exit to the body at each spinal level (each disc level). The spinal canal can be congenitally narrow which increases the chances of developing spinal stenosis with age. As degenerative changes occur in the spinal structures the spinal canal can become narrowed and tight.

The symptoms of spinal stenosis typically do not include back pain but rather leg pain, often bilateral, and worsened by walking but better with sitting. Typically presenting in people of 65 years or older, spinal stenosis can also present as a nerve root irritation of a sciatic type due to stenosis of the exit for the spinal nerve root. Physiotherapy is not usually very useful and little is found on examination apart from a reduction in spinal extension and many people manage their symptoms over time as best they can, although surgical spinal decompression can be very successful in relieving the symptoms.

Fatigue or Tiredness with Musculoskeletal Conditions

Tiredness or fatigue is an extremely common accompanying condition to a large number of musculoskeletal conditions. Patients may rate fatigue just as important and severe as their pain problems but there is little consensus on the diagnosis and treatment of this distressing condition. Fatigue has been studied in good quality trials of people with arthritic conditions. If fatigue is an issue it is commonly present in varying degrees from a low level of weariness to complete exhaustion. Fatigue may also be shattering and force the person to lie down and rest or sleep, is not necessarily related to activity at all and can involve cognitive faculties such as thinking and memory.

Tiredness interferes with all aspects of a patient.s life including employment, personal relationships, normal daily chores, looking after children, social life and leisure. Patients often save energy for essential activities such as work or chores at the expense of a social life or any kind of recreational activity. Typical consequences of this forced inability to participate in normal life are frustration, anger, resentment and depression. Fibromyalgia and chronic fatigue syndrome overlap in their presentation of pain and tiredness symptoms, with fibromyalgia typically exhibiting pain as its main symptom but accompanied sometimes by high fatigue levels.