How Does Physical Therapy Help With Traumatic Brain Injuries?

 Traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) are one of the worst wounds you can sustain. Any impact on your head can affect your brain, which often results in serious complications and permanent damage.

Unfortunately, TBIs can be caused by many different situations like a car accident, playing sports, and serious falls. This often results in some form of blunt force head trauma.

The treatment for blunt force head trauma depends on the severity of the blow, but one common strategy to help victims is physical therapy. Through participating in regular physical therapy, TBI victims can greatly improve their outlook on life and their physical capabilities.

To give you a better understanding of how physical therapy helps TBI victims, we’ll outline its advantages below.

Regaining Function

Arguably the greatest benefit of physical therapy is regaining function.

Brain injuries are so impactful because your brain creates the instructions necessary for the rest of your body to function. When your brain is injured, the creation and delivery of these instructions become impaired.

As a result, you may be unable to perform many of the tasks that you once completed with ease. Arguably the best example of this is needing to relearn how to walk after a TBI injury.

Many TBI victims have difficulty with their balance, strength, and coordination, which leads to difficulty walking. Through physical therapy, you can practice walking in a supportive environment that facilitates learning.

While damage from a TBI can be permanent, it doesn’t mean that you’ll always be as limited as you are directly following the injury. You can regain several essential skills that allow you to resume your life and even your career.

This starts with physical therapy, which is designed to let you regain comfort and confidence in controlling your body.

Providing Encouragement

Physical therapy is also essential for providing encouragement during your recovery process.

The physical limitations of a serious brain injury are hard to overlook, but half of the battle is mental. It is excruciatingly difficult to endure and accept the implications of a TBI. Because of this, it is natural to feel overwhelmingly negative feelings of despair, anger, and frustration.

It’s even easier to assume or believe that you’ll never get better. The problem with this is that humans are incredibly capable creatures that have an amazing affinity to heal.

This starts with your mindset, which affects your perception of your situation and the actions that you take. A positive mindset entails believing that you’ll get better, which leads to hard work put into physical therapy. In turn, you’ll recover faster.

It’s important to note that going through a TBI alone is almost impossible. Fortunately, physical therapy is an excellent source of encouragement because it is solely designed to help you get better.

When you have a physical therapist who has your back every step of the way, you can tap into their support to help you believe that you can recover.

Preventing Complications

TBI victims also undergo physical therapy to prevent complications related to their injury.

If you suffer a serious head injury, then you’ll inevitably need a lot of rest. This immobility can lead to issues, though. Serious complications like blood clots, bedsores, and muscle weakness are all threats when resting for long periods.

When you do move after resting, you can face further risks to your health. Pain is almost inevitable, and unstable blood pressure, poor control over your bowels, difficulty breathing, and reproductive issues may also be experienced.

As frustrating as these complications are, many can be avoided through physical therapy. This is largely because the issues mentioned above stem from a weakened body. Physical therapy aims to strengthen your body and give you more control, thus reducing your side effects.

With this in mind, physical therapy is often prescribed to TBI victims as a preventative measure against further health risks.

Success Varies

A final thing to keep in mind is that the success of physical therapy varies on the person and their situation.

We mentioned above that you can relearn the skills lost from a TBI incident. This is true, but not in every circumstance. Someone who suffers an injury that puts them into a permanent coma is unlikely to recover.

Furthermore, your ability to recover depends on your support environment, learning capacity, willingness to participate, desire to get better, and ability to cope with your condition.

Because of this, it is impossible to assess how well a TBI victim will recover. Many victims have a large propensity for recovering but aren’t in the right situation or mindset to foster their recovery.

Keep this in mind and fully commit to physical therapy if you ever suffer a serious brain injury. Your future directly depends on it!

Closing Thoughts

If you ever suffer a traumatic brain injury, then you’ll likely need physical therapy to help recover. Physical therapy is an invaluable resource that provides the perfect environment to strengthen your body and mind.

In particular, physical therapy helps TBI victims in three distinct ways. It allows them to regain function, provides encouragement, and prevents further health complications. Remember that the success of physical therapy largely varies and your outlook plays a major role.

Significant brain injuries are horrific, but the sooner you embrace your new reality, the earlier you can find peace. Take your recovery seriously and give it all you have!