According to physical therapist Sue Falsone, PT, ATC, MS, the former head physical therapist for the Los Angeles Dodgers, in an interview with Move Forward Radio (Avoiding Baseball Injuries-May 8, 2014), “Sometimes we ask the immature body to do things that they just physically can’t handle. And even if you’re getting through it at that time, it’s usually something that might break down later on.”
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Arthritis is a chronic condition that causes inflammation of the joints. It can cause pain, stiffness, and swelling. The hips, knees, hands, and spine are the most commonly affected joints. Arthritis is not a single disease but an umbrella term that includes a variety of different types. Some of the more common examples are osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, gout, psoriatic arthritis, and ankylosing spondylitis.
While physical therapy might not be the first treatment you think of for arthritis, it probably should be. A lot of people with arthritis choose to use medication to manage their pain, stop activities that hurt, and wait for things to get bad enough to have a joint replacement. But this isn’t a great plan – all medications have side effects, even over-the-counter ones. Reducing activity leads to muscle atrophy and even stiffer joints. Even though joint replacement surgery usually has good outcomes, it does come with its own set of risks and a painful recovery.
Physical therapy has been extensively researched as a treatment for arthritis and demonstrates good outcomes. Physical therapists typically start with exercise as the base for arthritis treatment. Exercise helps to regain lost joint motion, decrease feelings of stiffness, and strengthen muscles surrounding the affected joint. These benefits are all somewhat obvious. What surprises many people is that exercise has been shown to be as effective as medication for pain relief in many types of arthritis, without the side effects.
Physical therapy has more to offer people with arthritis than just exercise though. Education helps people understand their condition, what to expect, and how to manage it. As experts in human movement, physical therapists are especially good at helping people modify the way they perform certain tasks or activities to reduce strain on joints affected by arthritis. They can also suggest ways to modify the environment at work or home to reduce pain and improve function. They may also suggest things like braces, orthotics, or other devices that can help maintain mobility and reduce pain. On top of all of that, PT has been proven to be a cost-effective treatment, too.
With so many techniques that are proven effective in helping people with arthritis, physical therapy is a recommended first-line treatment for many types of arthritis. Now that you have a better understanding of what PT can do, hopefully, you’ll think of PT first when you think of arthritis too.
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Female athlete triad is a condition that involves an imbalance among three factors:
The risk of developing the triad has increased with the high demand that athletics place on the female body. In addition, societal pressures for performance and image can contribute. For example, a runner may feel that restricting calories will help her run faster and earn her greater success.
The triad has negative effects on multiple body systems in the early stages. It also can lead to long-term effects on health and well-being as a woman ages.
The three measurable factors of female athlete triad are:
Energy availability. This is the amount of energy you get from your diet, minus the energy used during activity.
Bone mineral density, or BMD. When bones do not get needed nutrients or too much exercise stresses them, their structure can change and they may lose density (mass). This can lead to osteopenia (lower than normal BMD). Osteopenia can lead to osteoporosis (loss of bone strength that increases fracture risk).
Menstrual dysfunction. Menstrual cycles range from periods that are normal to irregular to absent in females from about ages 11 to 51 (menopause). Triad involves an irregular or absent cycle.
Symptoms related to the triad may develop over months or years and may include:
Physical therapists can identify the signs and symptoms of the female athlete triad. They will initiate a team approach to care, as needed. Physical therapists also understand the effects that the triad may have on prescribed exercise. Once symptoms resolve, your physical therapist will design a safe return-to-activity program to help you perform at your best.
source: choosept.com
Hip fractures in older adults can result in loss of mobility. This type of fracture also can lead to significant medical expenses. But a 2014 study published in the American Journal of Public Health offers hope. It suggests that four hours of walking each week can greatly reduce hip fracture risk later in life.
The study looked at nearly 36,000 men over a 24-year period. It showed that men who walked briskly for four or more hours a week had a 62% lower risk of hip fracture than men who walked less than four hours a week.
Researchers also found that even men who walked four or more hours a week at a slower pace saw benefits. Those who walked at a slower pace for four or more hours a week had a 43% lower risk of fracture compared with those who walked less.
The Health Professionals Follow-up study reported time spent walking, sitting, and in 10 other discretionary activities every 2 years in 35, 996 men aged 50 years and older from 1986 to 2010. The study calculated hazard ratios (HRs) for risk of hip fracture by amount of activity and sitting in Cox proportional hazards models, adjusted for age, body mass index, smoking, medication use, disease diagnoses, and diet.
Over 24 years, participants reported 490 low-trauma hip fractures. Energy expenditure from all activities was weakly associated with lower risk of fracture. More walking time, with little alternat exercise, lowered risk by 43%, and risk decreased linearly with more frequent walking. Brisk (vs leisurely) pace lowered risk by 47%. Sitting lowered risk primarily among those who also walked for exercise. We observed no benefit of strenuous activity.
Walking is a relatively safe and easy activity for hip fracture prevention.
How Physical Therapy Can Help:
If you have limitations due to pain or decreased inactivity, our physical therapists can help by discussing what barriers are keeping you from starting a walking routine. Then we can help you by creating a safe and enjoyable routine that you can build upon, including an appropriate recommendation for footwear and orthotic inserts.
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To combat afternoon slumps in enthusiasm and focus, take a walk during the lunch hour.
A new study finds that even gentle lunchtime strolls can perceptibly — and immediately — buoy people’s moods and ability to handle stress at work.
It is not news, of course, that walking is healthy and that people who walk or otherwise exercise regularly tend to be more calm, alert and happy than people who are inactive.
But many past studies of the effects of walking and other exercises on mood have focused on somewhat long-term, gradual outcomes, looking at how weeks or months of exercise change people emotionally.
Fewer studies have examined more-abrupt, day-to-day and even hour-by-hour changes in people’s moods, depending on whether they exercise, and even fewer have focused on these effects while people are at work, even though most of us spend a majority of our waking hours in an office.
So, for the new study, which was published in the Scandinavian Journal of Medicine and Science in Sports this month, researchers at the University of Birmingham and other universities began by recruiting sedentary office workers at the university.
Potential volunteers were told that they would need to be available to walk for 30 minutes during their usual lunch hour three times a week.
Most of the resulting 56 volunteers were middle-aged women. It can be difficult to attract men to join walking programs, said Cecilie Thogersen-Ntoumani, the study’s lead author and now a professor of exercise science at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. Walking may not strike some men as strenuous enough to bother with, she said. But she and her colleagues did attract four sedentary middle-aged men to the experiment.
The volunteers completed a series of baseline health and fitness and mood tests at the outset of the experiment, revealing that they all were out of shape but otherwise generally healthy physically and emotionally.
Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani and her colleagues then randomly divided the volunteers into two groups, one of which was to begin a simple, 10-week walking program right away, while the other group would wait and start their walking program 10 weeks later, serving, in the meantime, as a control group.
To allow them to assess people’s moods, the scientists helped their volunteers to set up a specialized app on their phones that included a list of questions about their emotions. The questions were designed to measure the volunteers’ feelings, at that moment, about stress, tension, enthusiasm, workload, motivation, physical fatigue and other issues related to how they were feeling about life and work at that immediate time.
A common problem with studies of the effect of exercise on mood, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said, is that they rely on recall. People are asked to remember hours or days after the fact how exercise made them feel. Given how fleeting and mysterious our emotions can be, recalled responses are notoriously unreliable, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said.
Instead, she and her colleagues wanted in-the-moment assessments from people of how they felt before and after exercise. The phone app questions provided that experience, she said, in a relatively convenient form.
Then the first group began walking. Each volunteer was allowed to walk during one of several lunchtime sessions, all of them organized by a group leader and self-paced. Slower walkers could go together, with faster ones striding ahead. There was no formal prescribed distance or intensity for the walks. The only parameter was that they last for 30 minutes, which the volunteers had said would still allow them time to eat lunch.
The groups met and walked three times a week.
Each workday morning and afternoon during the first 10 weeks, the volunteers in both groups answered questions on their phones about their moods at that particular moment.
After 10 weeks, the second group began their walking program. The first group was allowed to continue walking or not as they chose. (Many did keep up their lunchtime walks.)
Then the scientists compared all of the responses, both between groups and within each individual person. In other words, they checked to see whether the group that had walked answered questions differently in the afternoon than the group that had not, and also whether individual volunteers answered questions differently on the afternoons when they had walked compared with when they had not.
The responses, as it turned out, were substantially different when people had walked. On the afternoons after a lunchtime stroll, walkers said they felt considerably more enthusiastic, less tense, and generally more relaxed and able to cope than on afternoons when they hadn’t walked and even compared with their own moods from the morning before a walk.
Although the authors did not directly measure workplace productivity in their study, “there is now quite strong research evidence that feeling more positive and enthusiastic at work is very important to productivity,” Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said. “So we would expect that people who walked at lunchtime would be more productive.”
As a pleasant, additional outcome, all of the volunteers showed gains in their aerobic fitness and other measures of health at the completion of their 10 weeks of walking.
But, tellingly, many said that they anticipated being unable to continue walking after the experiment ended and a few (not counted in the final tally of volunteers) had to drop out midway through the program. The primary impediment to their walking, Dr. Thogersen-Ntoumani said, had been “that they were expected by management to work through lunch,” suggesting that management might wish to acquaint themselves with the latest science.
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source: archive.nytimes.com
Hip impingement, or femoroacetabular impingement, involves a change in the shape of the surface of the hip joint. It can lead to stiffness, pain, and damage of the tissue and/or bone. It most often occurs in young, active people. Conditions that cause hip impingement can be present at birth or develop over time. It affects men and women. Physical therapists help people with hip impingement regain movement, flexibility, and strength, and return to their regular activities and sport.
The two types of hip impingement, “pincer” and “cam,” may occur alone or together. Hip impingement usually affects people who are younger than 50. It may precede hip osteoarthritis.
Pincer-type impingements affect men and women. This type may result when:
Regardless of the cause, pincer-type impingements pinch the labrum, a rim of connective tissue around the edge of the hip socket. This pinching happens especially when flexing the hip (moving the leg up). Over time this extra pressure leads to wear and tear that can cause inflammation. Sometimes it causes a labrum tear. If this condition persists, the cartilage that lines the hip joint may become worn, form holes, and develop bone spurs.
Cam-type impingements affect men more often than women and may result when:
Hip impingement may cause you to experience:
Your physical therapist will interview you to learn when and how your symptoms first began. They also will ask how your symptoms affect your daily life. They will discuss your goals for physical therapy and work with you on how best to achieve them.
Your physical therapist will perform an exam, which may include:
For a firm diagnosis, your doctor may order tests to help identify any changes in the joint or labrum. These tests may include X-rays or an MRI. A diagnosis of hip impingement may take some time, especially if you also have low back, buttock, or pelvic pain.
Your physical therapist will conduct a thorough examination, including taking a detailed history, and may prescribe stretches and strengthening exercises to balance the muscles around your hip. They may use manual (hands-on) therapy to help restore your hip’s range of motion. Your physical therapist also may discuss making changes to your activities and lifestyle to help improve function and decrease your pain.
Physical therapy may be beneficial for people with low-level hip pain and/or disability. Conservative care aims to:
Your physical therapist may use some or all of the following approaches to help you achieve these goals. They may help you avoid the need for surgery or delay your condition getting worse. Your treatment may include:
Modifying your daily, job-related, and sports activities. Your physical therapist will recommend and discuss specific positions and activities for you to avoid or modify. These will be designed to protect your hip. They may recommend limiting how often you bend at the hip to avoid further hip damage. To minimize tension on the hip, your physical therapist will teach you safe, controlled movements.
Improving lower-extremity muscle flexibility and joint movement. Stretching tight muscles. Stretching the hip directly can reduce abnormal forces that cause pain with motion. Stretching other body regions (trunk, leg, ankle, or foot), also may decrease stress at the hip.
Joint mobilization. Your physical therapist may gently move your hip to help ease pain. This may improve your ability to stretch or extend your hip joint.
Improving the strength of your lower extremities and trunk. Strengthening the hips and trunk can reduce abnormal forces on the already injured joint. Your physical therapist will help you develop movement strategies to compensate for the injured hip joint.
Improving lower-extremity balance and coordination. Your physical therapist will prescribe exercises to help improve balance and coordinating movements. These can minimize forces and stress on the hip joint.
Home exercise program. Your physical therapist will design a specific home exercise program based on your needs and goals for you to do on your own. These will help you to stay strong and healthy safely, once your physical therapy visits have ended.
Functional training. Once your pain, strength, and motion improve, you will be able to slowly return to more demanding activities. Based on your unique needs and goals, your physical therapist will create a series of activities for you to do. They will help you learn how to use and move your body correctly and safely during your daily, work, and sports activities.
Surgery for hip impingement is performed using arthroscopy. Arthroscopy is minimally invasive and only requires small incisions in the skin. The surgeon will insert pencil-sized instruments into the joint to repair the damage. The surgeon may perform one or more techniques during surgery as needed.
After surgery, physical therapy will depend on the type of procedure performed. On your first visit with a physical therapist, they will go over your history thoroughly and perform a physical exam (within the limits set by your surgeon). During later visits, your physical therapist may provide the following treatments:
Education. Your physical therapist will educate you about your condition.
Gait training. Your physical therapist will teach you how to walk with an assistive device (such as crutches or a walker) if needed. They will teach you how to avoid putting too much weight on your hip as it heals.
Range-of-motion exercises. Initially, hip range-of-motion exercises will be gently performed for you by your physical therapist. As you heal, your physical therapist may teach you active range-of-motion exercises for you to do on your own.
Flexibility exercises. Your physical therapist may teach you stretching exercises for the entire lower extremity and your trunk.
Strengthening exercises. At the appropriate time, your physical therapist will teach you how to do the following types of strengthening exercises:
Balance and coordination exercises. Your physical therapist will teach you how exercises to improve your balance and coordination.
Job- or activity-specific training. As you regain strength and movement, your physical therapist may add more specific exercises. Doing these will help prepare you to return to your work and sports activities.
Most people return to normal daily activities around three months after surgery. Returning to high-level activities and sports may take four to six months after surgery. Your physical therapist will recommend a gradual return to your regular activities based on your condition. Research shows that about 74% of athletes return to their prior playing ability after rehabilitation from this type of hip surgery. Each person is different. How long it takes to return to your desired activities will depend on the surgery performed and your sport.
Currently, there are no recommendations to prevent hip impingement. Despite a significant increase in research to learn more about this condition, there is a great deal that is unknown. For example, many active young people whose X-rays show abnormal hips do not have pain, despite active lives and playing sports.
However, evidence shows that physical therapy treatment, along with anti-inflammatory medicines, can:
Physical therapy is very important for people who:
All physical therapists are prepared through education and experience to treat patients who have hip impingement. You may want to consider:
Osteopenia is a condition that begins in people who lose bone mass, and this results in weak bones. It is associated with low-calcium diets, smoking, age-related hormone changes, certain diseases, and medications. Women over 50 face higher risks of developing osteopenia and those diagnosed with the condition are at increased risk of developing osteoporosis, a serious medical condition that leads to bone fragility. It’s important to note that lifestyle changes may help slow bone loss and that beneficial treatments do exist. A special non-invasive X-ray test can measure the amount of calcium and other minerals in a segment of bone, typically the hips and spine, to diagnose bone health.
Symptoms of advanced osteopenia may include back pain, loss of height, a stooped posture, and easily fractured bones. However, these warning signs are usually only evident once the condition progresses. Osteopenia is detected via testing to include both a physical examination and a DEXA (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) imaging test. The DEXA test is painless and determines whether a person has healthy bones or osteopenia or osteoporosis. Patients are given a score called a T-score to indicate normal bone density, osteopenia, or osteoporosis. (The scoring is as follows: +1 to -1 = normal bone density, -1 to -2.5 = osteopenia -2.5 or lower = osteoporosis.) The test can also give healthcare providers a baseline measurement so that they can make future comparisons.
It’s important to be proactive when it comes to health. If you believe that you are at risk of osteopenia or osteoporosis, it’s vital to see a medical doctor to discuss testing and strategies to keep your bones healthy and strong. If a doctor concludes that you have osteopenia following testing, he or she may suggest some measures to keep bones healthy and prevent the onset of osteoporosis. This may include:
Since people with low bone density are at increased risk of breaking bones, injury prevention is a critical step. Cleveland Clinic explains, “Falls are the leading cause of fractures in people with low bone density.” Thus, it’s vital to take personal safety measures to prevent falling. They suggest making sure homes have ample lighting, railings on stairs and in showers, and non-skid rugs. They also propose treating slippery surfaces indoors and out and removing tripping hazards from the home.
A physical therapist can help you prevent and treat low bone mass at any age. They will prescribe the specific amount and type of exercise that best builds and maintains strong bones.
Your physical therapist will review your health history, including your medical, family, medication, exercise, dietary, and hormonal history. They will also conduct a complete physical examination and identify your risk factors for low bone density.
It is important to exercise throughout life. It is especially important to exercise to maintain healthy bones if you have been diagnosed with low bone mass. Exercise can help to build bone or slow the loss of bone mass.
Your physical therapist is likely to prescribe exercise and physical activity to help prevent fractures and falls, and to reduce bone loss. Your treatment program may include:
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sources:
amac.us/osteopenia-what-women-over-50-should-know
choosept.com/guide/physical-therapy-guide-osteopenia-low-bone-mass
The National Osteoporosis Foundation recommends people at average risk get a DEXA scan starting at 65 for women and 70 for men. The onset of symptoms, frequent bone fractures, and/or a family history of bone fractures or osteoporosis may also increase one’s risk for bone loss. This may necessitate a DEXA scan at a younger age. As always, it’s important to dialogue with your doctor regularly regarding all aspects of your health, including the all-important bones that support your body, allow you to move, and protect your brain, heart, and organs from harm.
Please note that this article is for general information purposes only and is not intended as medical advice.
If black-legged ticks—also known as deer ticks—are infected with a certain bacterium (Borrelia burgdorferi), their bite can transmit Lyme disease. Symptoms of Lyme include headache, fever, chills, fatigue, and muscle aches in the early stages.
But if left untreated, it can cause more serious neurological symptoms, like nerve pain or a form of temporary facial paralysis known as Bell’s palsy, says John Aucott, M.D., director of the Johns Hopkins Lyme Disease Clinical Research Center. In some cases, despite treatment, symptoms can last for months or even years.
It’s hard to say exactly how often these bites occur, but cases of Lyme are on the rise. In 2006, there were nearly 20,000 confirmed cases in the United States. By 2021, that number had grown to over 35,000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
But that’s just confirmed cases, meaning they were reported to the CDC by state health departments. Based on laboratory data and medical claims information, the CDC estimates that the actual number of people diagnosed with Lyme every year is probably much higher: around 476,000.
One reason for the upward trend: “There are ticks in more places now, especially black-legged ticks,” says Thomas Mather, Ph.D., director of the TickEncounter Resource Center at the University of Rhode Island.
More than 35,000 confirmed cases of Lyme disease were reported in 2021, according to the CDC.
“Deer serve as the principle reproductive host for these black-legged ticks,” he explains. And as the deer habituate and stray more into populated areas, so do the ticks.
That means you may need to step up your game for tick prevention, especially during the high season for ticks, which generally runs from April to mid-November, Mather says. Here are eight things you need to know to steer clear of the little suckers.
Lyme disease was first discovered in Lyme, Connecticut, but you don’t need to be a New Englander to be at risk.
Lyme is most prevalent in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, as well as in some Midwest states. In fact, 95 percent of all confirmed Lyme cases in 2019 were in just 15 states: Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wisconsin.
But infected ticks can still be found in neighboring states, as well as in the South and on the West Coast. Ticks have different risk profiles in different areas, Mather explains.
For instance, about half the ticks in the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and upper Midwest states carry a germ that could make you sick, like Lyme. In the South, it’s more like one out of 20. And on the West Coast, it’s more like one out of 50 or one out of 100, he says.
There’s a misconception out there that you need to be an avid hiker or hunter to get a tick bite, Dr. Aucott says. But that’s just not true. While the tick risk is obvious in woodsy habitats, it can also be pretty high right in your own backyard.
“Gardening is actually a common risk for being exposed,” he says. “We tend to see the risks in older people from gardening in their own yard.”
In the early stages of Lyme, you’ll likely just feel lousy, like you would with a flu-like illness, and you may not see or recognize any rash, Dr. Aucott says. That’s why it can be difficult to finger Lyme as the potential cause, especially if you don’t remember getting a tick bite.
“Only about 30 percent of people who get Lyme recall a tick bite,” Dr. Aucott says. That’s because ticks are pros at remaining undetected so they can feast on your blood. A few things help them do that:
Many people think a red-and-white bullseye rash—imagine the Target logo—is Lyme’s calling card, but you don’t need to have it to have Lyme, Dr. Aucott says.
“A stereotypical bullseye rash is only about 20 to 30 percent of the rashes,” he says.
The vast majority of people with Lyme—about 70 to 80 percent—will have some kind of rash. But they’re usually simply red, uniformly round or oval, and about two to three inches in diameter. These rashes often pop up in places you don’t normally look, and develop about seven to 10 days after an infected tick bites you.
An experienced doctor who sees the Lyme rash can usually diagnose it on sight. But if you don’t have the rash, if the rash went away, or if the doctor just wants to confirm, he or she may order a blood test to check for Lyme antibodies called an enzyme immunoassay (EIA) test.
If the EIA is positive, a second test called a Western Blot will be performed to confirm the diagnosis.
The problem: Depending on when you get the blood test, it may not give you an accurate reading, Dr. Aucott says. “The blood test takes about three weeks to turn positive,” he says. “So if you are at the earliest stage of infection, the blood tests may still be negative.”
If your doctor is suspicious of Lyme but your initial test comes back negative, they may recommend you take a retest in three to four weeks. After a confirmed diagnosis, the typical treatment for Lyme is a two- or three-week course of an antibiotic called doxycycline.
As always, the best way to protect yourself is to play the preventive game.
“Stay out of places ticks are looking to bite you,” Dr. Aucott says. That means stay on the trail if you’re outdoors. Don’t wander off into the brush or the high grass—both environments ticks like.
Another option: Wear clothing treated with permethrin, a chemical that incapacitates or even kills ticks but is safe for humans, Mather says. Look for clothes treated on the inside and the outside.
You should also look for a 0.5 percent permethrin spray to treat your shoes before going outside. The treatment typically lasts about one month.
If you have pets, note that permethrin is not harmful to dogs—but may be harmful to cats and fish. The TickEncounter Resource Center advises letting permethrin-treated clothing dry completely before going near cats. Learn more about permethrin here, and see tips to protect your pets from ticks here.
Even if you’re taking preventive measures, you should still perform a tick check each day to make sure one didn’t latch on, Mather says. The “lean over and look” strategy can be harder as you get older, and because nymph-stage ticks are so small, they can easily be overlooked if you don’t have an up-close view.
Try the toilet-time check instead: Each day when you sit on the toilet, make it a time to check for ticks too, Mather says. This gives you a close look at the areas ticks often hide: the inside of your legs, your genital area, and below your belly button.
A tick typically has to stay attached to you for 36 to 48 hours before it can transmit its Lyme-causing bacterium. So if you’re able to remove the tick within 24 hours or so, you likely won’t have had the chance of Lyme infection, Mather says.
For fast and safe tick removal, use fine-tipped or pointed tweezers, which will allow you to reach in from the side and grab the head of the tick, not the back. Then you can pull the tick firmly upward and off your skin.
“The germs are in the back part of the tick, so when you only grab the head, you have a better chance of not squeezing germs into you,” Mather says.
Dispose of the tick by flushing it down a toilet or placing it in a sealed bag before tossing in the trash. Clean the bite with rubbing alcohol or soap and water.
What not to do: Strike a match to burn off a tick. You not only risk burning your skin, but black-legged ticks have long mouthparts and lock themselves into your skin when they bite, Mather says. So the match trick won’t cause them to back out.
There are several potential treatments for Lyme disease through Physical Therapy. They are usually focused on the secondary symptoms and work in concert with the medical management of the condition. A Physical Therapy program may include:
·Manual Therapy includes massages, stretching and joint mobilization to improve alignment, mobility and range of motions, and to alleviate the pain of affected joints.
·Exercise Programs to help stretch and strengthen muscles to help assist weakened surrounding joints.
·Mechanical Modalities include ultrasounds, electrical stimulations, laser, ice and heat to decrease pain and inflammation.
·Gait and Balance Training as well as other forms of training to help improve movement techniques and reduce stress on joints caused by daily activities
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SOURCES:
silversneakers.com/blog/lyme-disease-what-older-adults-should-know/
fitness-forum.com/single-post/2018/06/05/lyme-disease-and-physical-therapy
Restrictions are lessening more and more and people are looking to get active and enjoy the warm weather. That’s all good news, but if you had a long break from activity because of the pandemic or otherwise, your body might not be ready to jump right back in. Here are a few tips to help you get more active without getting hurt:
Start slow
– If you’re a runner, think about a walk-to-run program
– If you’re a weight lifter, start with lighter weights and fewer reps.
– Whatever your activity of choice is, start with short periods of activity and gradually work your way back up.
Warm-up and cool down
Warming up gets your heart and lungs ramped up and prepares your muscles and tendons for the increase in activity about to come. Include some light cardio like jogging, calisthenics, or cycling, followed by active stretching like butt kicks, high knees, or yoga.
Cooling down transitions your body back to a lower state of stress – it brings your heart rate and breathing down, decreases blood flow to your muscles and back to places like your digestive system, and helps you relax. It’s also a great place for static stretches if you need some work on your flexibility.
Take a day off
Rest days let your body recover and keep you from getting burned out. Not enough exercise isn’t good for you, but too much of a good thing can cause problems too.
Watch for early signs of injury
Some soreness for a few days after activity is normal, especially if you’ve had a long break. But there are a few common issues to watch out for as you return to activity:
– Swelling or bruising
– Joint pain, especially in the knees or shoulders
– Foot pain, which could be a sign of plantar fasciitis
– Muscle strains – particularly common in the hamstrings
– Sprains – most common in the ankle
Any of these issues justifies a call to our physical therapists!
Getting checked out early can prevent an injury that derails your attempt to return to activity. Our PTs see all of the issues just mentioned on a regular basis and can help safely guide you back into a more active lifestyle.
