Physiotherapy — What to know about healing energies

You may shake your head now because you don’t believe in my self-healing “hocus-pocus.” I suggest you consider the following examples:

You break your leg. The doctor diagnoses the fracture and sends you to the plaster room where it is immobilized. You don’t receive medication; you must rely on your body’s self-healing processes… and tadaaam! In about 2–3 months it’s healed. You may not even have seen a doctor in the meantime!

Or you’re chopping vegetables in the kitchen and cut your finger in an unlucky motion. The flesh is torn, blood is flowing, you can see tendon at the depth of the wound… You clean it, dress it and… your body restores it — and no doctor has even looked at it!

So why don’t you believe that these self-healing, “repair” processes can also handle, for example, an inflammation?

Of course, if you work against them — for example, suppress the healing processes with drugs — your body has a hard time. But if you let them work… or even better, help them…

Physiotherapy exists to help your body’s self-healing processes.

If you understand this, you can deal with many of your problems yourself. Not overnight. Just as restoring a fracture can take 12–16 weeks, treating an inflammation that has been present for years also requires a few weeks.

If you consistently help your body, your organism will reward you!

Physiotherapy or physical therapy?

Physiotherapy is one of the oldest branches of healing. The term derives from the Greek physos, meaning nature. It is a broader concept that includes treatments based on natural energies.

This category includes any method that uses the sun, light, water, air or movement to activate healing. For example: therapeutic exercise, therapeutic massage, hydrotherapy, balneotherapy, medicinal waters, cave-air therapy, halotherapy (salt-air treatment), etc.

Physico-therapy is a narrower concept within physiotherapy.

It means the therapeutic use of an artificial energy. Examples are electricity, ultrasound, magnetic fields, laser light, polarized light, infrared light, and so on.

What all physiotherapeutic remedies have in common is that the treatment “stimulates” the body’s own functions and helps healing.

• it mobilizes the body's own defense system,
• it stimulates the cells’ energy production and cellular processes,
• it activates the body's self-healing mechanisms,
• it triggers a biological chain reaction,
• it has no side effects.

Physiotherapy in the past

As mentioned above, physiotherapy is one of the oldest branches of healing — some of its methods have been used so long that their roots go back millennia.

In prehistoric times people instinctively treated injuries: they bathed injured parts in healing springs, used the sun’s healing power, rested painful limbs, and so on.

In antiquity healing became more conscious: the Greek god of healing was Asclepius, and priests in the so-called Asclepius temples treated patients with baths, medicinal herbs, exercise and diet.

The family of Hippocrates — often called the father of medicine — treated patients in such temples for generations; Hippocrates himself learned a great deal from the treatments practiced there.

From him comes the still-valid basic rule of medicine: “primum nil nocere” — “first, do no harm.” It is clear that Hippocrates knew about medical practices from other regions as well. Traditional Indian (Ayurveda has detailed written records from as early as 3500 BCE), Tibetan and Chinese medical systems are based on several thousand years of experience and practice. They used numerous physiotherapeutic methods, including energy healing, massage, cold–hot therapy, etc. These methods are still widespread and common in the East.

The Middle Ages were “dark” with respect to medicine: the rise of religious power greatly suppressed the pursuit of scientific approaches. Diseases were regarded as consequences of a “sinful life.” The Renaissance brought liberation: bathhouses were opened, communal bathing developed, and sweat cabinets were used. Several Renaissance discoveries are still used in modern physiotherapy.

In the modern era new discoveries arrived one after another. Electricity, various radiations, ion migration, mechanical ultrasound, and so on became known. Today almost only imagination limits how you combine physiotherapeutic methods.

Principles of physiotherapeutic treatments

These basic principles of physiotherapeutic treatments must be considered for every procedure.

1. Principle: Only absorbed energy (in technical terms: energy that is absorbed, or "absorbed") can exert a proper biological effect in the body; energy that merely passes through is ineffective.
2. Principle: Physiotherapeutic treatments have both local and general effects. The general effect is weaker than the local one, but it always occurs. Circulatory, neural and hormonal regulatory systems participate in these changes. You can say that the local treatment in some way “activates” the entire organism.
3. Principle: Biological response reactions develop in the organism under the influence of physical stimuli; two forms are known: primary (stronger) and secondary (weaker).
4. Principle: Always keep in mind applying the proper therapeutic dose, because for all biologically active energies their effects depend on dose and can be beneficial, damaging or even lethal!

Forms of energy

What does energy actually mean? In physical terms it is the measure of a body’s capacity to perform work.

For a living organism this needs more precise interpretation. According to the law of conservation of energy, “energy is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed” — and our living body is an open system capable of taking up and releasing various forms of energy.

If we introduce energy into the organism, it interacts with tissues that absorb it. The absorbed energy is transformed, for example into heat, it catalyzes cellular processes, and so on.

Various forms of energy are used in physiotherapeutic treatments.

• Electrical energy: used as electrotherapy. There are many forms: nerve stimulation, muscle stimulation, microcurrent, interference, iontophoresis, etc.
• Thermal energy: this includes heat therapy, such as thermal water, and cryo- or cold therapy.
• Light energy: Everyone has felt how sunlight energizes us. Artificial devices that use different ranges of light are based on this, such as infrared lamps, softlaser or color-therapy devices.
• Chemical energy: refers to medicinal waters, therapeutic clays, medicinal solutions, herbal extracts.
• Magnetic energy: an artificially generated pulsed magnetic field can have positive effects on the organism.
• Mechanical energy: this type of energy is used in traction treatments, underwater jet treatments, passive therapeutic exercise and massage; even ultrasond treatment owes its beneficial effects to this kind of energy.

Physical therapy treatments

Electrotherapy

Treatments using electric current come in many varieties; their effects — depending on electrode placement and waveform — can be diverse: pain relief, anti-inflammatory, circulation-enhancing and edema-reducing effects; in addition, currents can be used to strengthen or relax muscles, etc. Types of electrotherapy treatments include:

• low-frequency treatments,
• medium-frequency treatments,
• high-frequency treatments.

Magnetotherapy

The magnetic field required for the treatment is generated by electric current. Forms include:

• magnetostimulation (low-energy, high-frequency pulsed magnetic field treatment): primarily used for soft tissue (skin, muscles, tendons, ligaments, joints) conditions to stimulate healing (biostimulation),
• magnetotherapy (low-frequency, high-energy pulsed magnetic field treatment): used to treat changes in bones and cartilage.

Physical vascular therapy (BEMER)

BEMER therapy is the newest form among physical therapy treatments. It represents a distinct group among treatments. Only devices produced by the BEMER manufacturer provide the described effect.

Its basis is a very low-intensity pulsed magnetic field applied with a special (patented and protected by the manufacturer) waveform.

It significantly increases flow in microscopic-sized vessels. Thanks to the improved circulation, it is excellent in conditions where complaints are due to poor blood flow. The treatment’s effect is the stimulation of the body’s healing processes.

Phototherapy

There are several types of light treatment:

• infrared treatment has circulation-improving, muscle-spasm-relieving and pain-relieving effects and is also used for some ENT conditions,
• ultraviolet treatment is mainly used for certain skin diseases,
• laser treatment helps pain relief, reduces inflammation and promotes wound healing,
• heliotherapy means healing with sunlight,
• color light therapy, also called chromotherapy, improves skin metabolism, oxygen and nutrient supply, circulation and toxin elimination,
• Bioptron treatment accelerates wound healing (even when the skin is missing).

Thermotherapy

In thermotherapy cold and heat are used for different therapeutic purposes — cold reduces inflammation, while heat helps reduce muscle tightness and relieves spasms. Thermotherapeutic treatments include:

• cold and hot compresses and packs,
• paraffin treatment (warm paraffin care has beneficial effects on the skin, joints — e.g., small rheumatic joint inflammation — and nails),
• mud packs, which besides relieving stress also reduce joint pain,
• sauna.

Mechanotherapy

Mechanotherapeutic treatments are those that use mechanical energies.

• Movement therapy includes exercise and therapeutic exercise.
• Massage and therapeutic massage, and underwater jet massage are also physiotherapeutic procedures.
• Ultrasond treatment relaxes connective tissues and muscles, softens muscle knots, and has vasodilator and circulation-improving effects.

Hydrotherapy

Treating with water can take many forms. Being in water has physiological effects, for example on the heart, circulatory system, lungs and musculoskeletal system. Hydrotherapeutic procedures include, among others:

• bath treatments of different temperatures,
• cold and hot water compresses/packs,
• as well as pourings and rinses.

Balneotherapy

Balneotherapy means the external and internal use of thermal mineral waters for therapeutic purposes; accordingly, balneotherapy includes

• therapeutic mineral water baths and drinking cures,
• and therapeutic mud treatments.

Climatotherapy

It has long been known that certain climatic characteristics promote healing — therefore these climatic features are used for therapeutic purposes.

• Perhaps the best-known form of climatotherapy is speleotherapy, i.e. cave therapy, which is useful in treating respiratory diseases.
• Halotherapy, i.e. inhaling salt air, was a trusted method in Hippocrates’ time for easing symptoms of asthma, allergies and respiratory diseases. Natural and artificial salt caves or seashores provide access.

Inhalation therapy

In inhalation therapy the applied drug acts in small amounts locally on the affected area, and its use can minimize the drugs’ side effects. Examples of inhalation therapy include:

• therapeutic mineral water aerosol therapy (i.e. inhaling nebulized mineral water through the mouth),
• salt therapy (inhaling salt air mist),
• and aeroion therapy (i.e. inhaling therapeutically active vapors).

Dietetics

Dietetics — applied nutritional science — while not a physiotherapeutic method, plays a role in establishing optimal nutrition, i.e. the appropriate energy intake from food.

This includes both health preservation and individualized nutritional and lifestyle counseling for patients with specific diseases, which will help alleviate symptoms.

Different physiotherapeutic treatments can be used separately or combined with each other.

I repeat: start physiotherapeutic treatment only after you've been examined and have a precise diagnosis and there are no contraindications to the method. Consult your treating physician and your physiotherapist so you choose the most suitable therapy for your problem!

Watch it in the video on my YouTube channel.