Physical Therapy , Health & Wellness , Blog

Elevate Your Heart Rate With Physical Therapy

(Used with permission from the Private Practice Section of the American Physical Therapy Association)

Heart disease is a leading cause of death and disability.

This shouldn’t be a surprise – it’s been at the top of the list for years. You know that taking care of your heart is important. That means doing things like eating right, avoiding smoking, and exercising regularly. While all of those things can be difficult, today we’re going to focus on exercise.

How Physical Therapy Can Help With Your Heart Health

Cardiovascular exercise is anything that makes you breathe harder and your heart pump faster. That could be walking, running, dancing, biking, swimming or hiking. It strengthens your heart and blood vessels. It can help control weight, lower blood pressure, reduce stress, and prevent heart disease.

If you’re regularly going for a run or swimming laps, you don’t need help from your PT. But 3 out of 4 adults aren’t exercising regularly. If you’d like to get started, your PT may be just the person to help you. It’s not uncommon to get injured, then never get back to your old routine. Your PT can help you deal with the old injury and design a plan to get you safely back to regular activity.

It’s also not uncommon to try to be more active on your own, only to stir up pain somewhere like your back, hip, knee or shoulder. Your PT can help with that too. They’ll figure out why you’re having pain, help you correct it, and get you a plan to reach your goals.

Physical therapists can also help you safely increase your activity levels after major medical issues like a heart attack, stroke, or even cancer. Recent research has shown improvements in cardiovascular fitness, fatigue levels and even pain in cancer patients who participate in a personalized physical fitness plan from a PT.

Whatever your barriers to physical activity are, your PT can likely help you overcome them. As movement experts, physical therapists are trained to deal with a variety of conditions. They’ll help you work around whatever issues you have so you can safely elevate your heart rate and keep cardiovascular disease away.

Health & Wellness , Physical Therapy , Aches & Pains , Sports , Blog

Concussions Happen, PT Can Help

Written by Brad Kruse, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, Cert DN

Concussions happen.

When people talk about concussions, the first thing that comes to mind is a sport related injury. While those who play football or hockey see the highest incidence of this type of injury, the rate of concussions in other sports like soccer are not far behind. At Dubuque Physical Therapy, we have worked with patients who have had a concussion while participating in swimming, and in golf, as well as people who were injured at work or who slipped and experienced a fall.

A concussion is a mild traumatic brain injury (mTBI).

Anyone, at just about any age, can have a concussion. Concussion symptoms can sometimes be missed, particularly when they follow a non-sport related incident. This type of injury generally is the result of the brain moving around within the skull and often coming into contact with the inside of the skull. A direct blow to the head can be the cause, but a concussion can also occur with no direct contact to the head. A blow to the body that results in the head moving or stopping quickly can result in what is called an impulse mechanism of injury. In either case, there is a change in brain function that results in altered brain and neural function.

Concussion Symptoms Vary

The forces involved in a concussion impact many systems in the body. While there is a wide range of symptoms that can be present following a concussion, among the most common symptoms are:

headache
dizziness/lightheadedness
nausea
sensitivity to light or noise
mental impairments such as difficulty with concentration or retention of information.

The vast majority of concussions resolve relatively quickly. In adults, about 75% of those with a concussion recover within a week, and 90+% of concussion related symptoms resolve within the first 2 weeks. In teenagers or younger individuals, the recovery time is typically longer. Most of our younger population with a concussion recover within 2 weeks, and 85% of symptoms resolve within 4 weeks.

Physical therapists can help guide a person through the concussion recovery process. This recovery process includes the return to mental as well as physical activity. A school aged individual needs to tolerate being in the classroom before we worry about a return to athletic activities. An adult may need to work through the recovery process in order to return to work. Mental/cognitive issues can be treated in a similar fashion to physical limitations, with the prescription of specific activities or exercises from your PT.

Persistent Post-Concussion Symptoms

Persistent post-concussion symptoms, those that linger for more than 2 weeks in adults, and 2-4 weeks in younger individuals, can be subdivided into various categories.

Symptoms such as a headache or dizziness can be cervicogenic in nature, meaning some dysfunction in the cervical spine (neck) is contributing to the problem.
Dizziness, ringing in the ears and vision related problems can be related to the vestibular system (helps with balance and the brain’s ability to determine the position of the body), or the ocular system (eyes).
Another common subgroup of persistent concussion related symptoms relates to the cardiovascular system. Heart rate and blood pressure changes can trigger post-concussion symptoms.

Research shows us that simply resting and completely avoiding exercise or mental activity does not help the recovery process.

Instead, a specific process that gradually increases the intensity and duration of the offending task(s) leads to a faster resolution of symptoms. Every person and their individual circumstances are unique, just as every concussion is unique. Recovery from persistent post-concussion symptoms can be bolstered by having a physical therapist as part of the health care team involved in an individual’s recovery.

The expert physical therapists at Dubuque Physical Therapy are trained to assess which components are contributing to post-concussion symptoms. We will then work with you, and in coordination with your physician or health care provider and your school or employer, to develop an individual plan for recovery.

When a concussion happens, Dubuque Physical Therapy can help!

Written by Brad Kruse, PT, DPT, SCS, CSCS, Cert DN

Physical Therapist and Sports Clinical Specialist

Dubuque Physical Therapy

Physical Therapy , Health & Wellness , Chronic Pain , Back Pain Relief , Neck Pain Relief , Aches & Pains , Blog

Improve Your Work From Home

Written by Molly Hoppenjan, PT, DPT, ATC

Still working from home?!?

At this point, if you are still working from home, you may not see an end date in the near future, however you probably have come to figure out the positive and negatives of this working situation.

On the down side:

Have you found it hard to focus with kids and animals running around you all day?
Do you miss the morale of being with your coworkers?
Have you been noticing more aches and pains from not having the most ideal set up?

On the up side:

Your schedule may be a little more flexible
Who doesn’t love being able to get a load of laundry going in between meetings or phone calls?

Take breaks!

These breaks actually aren’t a bad thing at all. Research supports the use of shorter breaks more frequently throughout the workday to help decrease musculoskeletal pain, while actually maintaining productivity. Taking a short break every 30-45 minutes is beneficial for your body and your brain.

The breaks can be as simple as walking to the printer instead of having it right at your desk, or walking around the house while you are making a phone call instead of sitting in front of your computer.

How’s that desk set up?

While getting up and moving throughout your work day is very important, so is your workstation set up. Check out the Patient Resources page of our website for a handout of an ideal desk setup to keep your body in the best possible position. This may require you to be a little creative with what you can use to make this happen.

Remember those old textbooks that you kept because you thought that you would use them? They could now double as a computer monitor stand or a foot rest.

If the chair that you are using doesn’t have great back support, a rolled up towel or T-shirt placed behind your low back can do the trick.

What should you do during your breaks?

Now that we have you set up for success, there are a few things that you can do during your breaks to maintain those good mechanics. This spring we created a work from home video series that you can reference on our website, Facebook and Instagram to follow along with stretches and exercises. While these exercises and stretches are great, it is also recommended to get 30 minutes of dedicated exercise a day.

Working from home may even allow you a little more flexibility of when you can squeeze your work out in, whether it is over your lunch break or between meetings. If you are finding it hard to complete your workouts due to aches and pains, the physical therapists at Dubuque Physical Therapy can help you out.

Get up and try it!

Try a few of these things and let us know how it goes! We would love to hear from you on social media or through reviews on Facebook and Google!