Can physical therapy decrease my need for pain medication?

Can physical therapy decrease my need for pain medication?

Jerry Pryde, MD, MPH, CIME (Clinical Chief, Department of Rehabilitation, Cedars-Sinai Medical Center) gives expert video advice on: Can physical therapy decrease my need for pain medication? and more...

Physical therapy can help you with your pain management, and often I see that patients who are participating in a physical therapy program require less pain medicine. The goal would be, hopefully if the therapy is working well, to help you reduce your pain, that we would be able to stop you having to take the medications by mouth. Now sometimes a therapy program can be more painful in the beginning before it actually starts to relieve your pain. So don't give up on your physical therapy if you find it's painful in the beginning, but make sure you're letting the therapist and your physician who may be supervising the program - make sure you let them know what type of pain, or how you're experiencing pain while you're doing the physical therapy. It may be a normal occurrence before you get to a pain free state.