My experience with physical therapists has been that they are good at finding soft tissue (muscle, tendon, ligament) issues; and they generally provide exercises for you to do at home which are supposed to help your specific issues. (They do not expect you to pay close attention to your movement at all times; normal people can’t do that and they’re at least that realistic.) I suppose they might ask you to do something like it for a short time to help with diagnosis, but not as a form of long-term treatment. (Although as another caveat, if there’s a specific thing you are doing that they think is causing major problems, they may suggest you stop doing it. For example, I significantly changed my sleeping position to fix some back problems I was having.)
Payment-wise, I believe you may be able to get this covered by insurance if you get a referral to a PT through your primary care physician. And notably, in the state of California I believe a PT can’t legally see you without such a referral anyway, from my own research when I was going to see one.
Your physician may want to test you for other things that might cause your issues, if they can think of any common ones, e.g. vitamin deficiencies. They may want you to get a general-purpose blood test for Basic Deficiencies in Important Stuff, just to check. Your insurance ought to cover all of this, subject to any copays/deductibles etc., which I understand could still be expensive depending on your insurance.
My experience with physical therapists has been that they are good at finding soft tissue (muscle, tendon, ligament) issues; and they generally provide exercises for you to do at home which are supposed to help your specific issues. (They do not expect you to pay close attention to your movement at all times; normal people can’t do that and they’re at least that realistic.) I suppose they might ask you to do something like it for a short time to help with diagnosis, but not as a form of long-term treatment. (Although as another caveat, if there’s a specific thing you are doing that they think is causing major problems, they may suggest you stop doing it. For example, I significantly changed my sleeping position to fix some back problems I was having.)
Payment-wise, I believe you may be able to get this covered by insurance if you get a referral to a PT through your primary care physician. And notably, in the state of California I believe a PT can’t legally see you without such a referral anyway, from my own research when I was going to see one.
Your physician may want to test you for other things that might cause your issues, if they can think of any common ones, e.g. vitamin deficiencies. They may want you to get a general-purpose blood test for Basic Deficiencies in Important Stuff, just to check. Your insurance ought to cover all of this, subject to any copays/deductibles etc., which I understand could still be expensive depending on your insurance.
I’ve had tests for Basic Deficiencies in Important Stuff, but maybe once I get a new pcp I’ll ask about a physical therapist.