By Andrew J Gaetano, PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS
Board Certified Orthopedic Doctor of Physical Therapy at Capital Area Physical Therapy and Wellness
Why Choose Physical Therapy?
You have several options when it comes to your health and who you decide to take advice from. Why choose a physical therapist?
Each individual profession will have its own expertise, methods of treatment, techniques, etc. When it comes to your health and well being, you obviously want to seek advice from someone who not only understands the human body, but also can appreciate the very complex way the body operates. Your physician understands this, and they can offer you specific medical treatments, and help keep you in good general health.
With an injury to the muscular system, physicians will often times refer patients to another practitioner for further and additional treatment. With so many options, how can you decide on what is best for you?
Consider this; you wake up in the morning with back pain. It can be a scary occurrence.
- Why did this happen?
- What is the causing the pain/problem you are having?
- Perhaps you know exactly how it happened- the bigger question is: how do you get it better?
You have muscles, bones, joints, nerves, a brain, a vascular system, and a whole host of other tissues that are vital to the way a human body moves.
Disease, dysfunction, and injury can occur in any of these tissues. The professionals at Capital Area Physical Therapy and Wellness are trained in the complex inter-workings of all of these components of the human body working together (nearly every part of the human body, for that matter), and how to evaluate for the source of your problem- not just temporarily treat your pain. We take the extra time to explain not only how we can help you in the present time, but teach you how to potentially prevent future problems from ever happening, even if you didn’t have pain in the present time. We not only use our previous experiences in how we treat you, but also use the best current evidence based on years of valuable research.
We at Capital Area Physical Therapy and Wellness are advancing ourselves from other alternative practitioners, for good reason.
Physical Therapy Certifications
You may not know this, but almost all physical therapist that graduate this year will be graduating with a DPT, “doctor of physical therapy” degree. What exactly does this mean?
The past several years has seen huge advancements in the way physical therapists treat dysfunction in the human body. Research has exploded in the field. The American Physical Therapy Association has pushed to ensure that those practicing physical therapy today are doing so better than in any years past. Physical therapists can now get board certified in certain areas of practice (for example, orthopedics, pediatrics, etc).
Long story short, good physical therapists now have to be thinkers. We don’t just go blindly treating patients anymore simply because “that’s the way we’ve always done it”, with little or no research to back our decisions. We don’t just go out blindly giving lump sums of advice with absolutely no individualization to their technique. We don’t just look at one part of the body or one tissue in the body without considering potential problems in all the other parts that may be silently causing the dysfunction.
PT Care Options
There are some techniques they will help some people, some of the time. Don’t settle for treatment that only gives temporary relief, and requires you to come back over and over and over again. The therapists at Capital Area Physical Therapy and Wellness have several “tools” in our tool box (hands on/manual therapy techniques, education, proper exercise), and are good enough at evaluating a patient to decide on which tool or tools are best at helping your individual situation.
The therapists at CAPT are good people to know.
Connect with our experienced staff to discuss your physical therapy needs. Our PT clinic offices are located in Saratoga, Malta and Queensbury NY.
