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  • #1 Exercise for Balance and Strength (60+)

    "So my number one exercise for older adults that have a feeling of weakness or difficulty with endurance or they get tired with their movements or they're having trouble with their balance, this is an amazing foundational exercise, and it's called the sit-to-stand exercise. This Exercise Works every muscle in the lower half. It forces your system to kind of think about balance and the proper way to move your weight around above your feet, which helps with your walking as well. And it also strengthens the same muscles that we need for elevations and getting up and down curb steps and stairs and things like that. So it's extremely simple, but there are some details involved that I want to make sure that we are on target with here and that you understand. You should be getting up from a chair or a bed the same way that I'm going to teach you here. So to start the exercise, we're going to obviously be sitting down. You may be sitting back in your chair watching television, things like that. The first move, you need to move your bottom closer to the front of the chair. Move your bottom closer to the front of the chair. Your second move is to bring your feet back toward you as close as you can get to the chair. Okay, now if you have difficulty in moving your knees and bending your knees comfortably, just get them back as far as you possibly can. When you do this exercise, try and choose a solid chair that's not going to slip in case you do kind of have a tendency to do what we call vaulting that I just described. Your body will move away from that as you get stronger with the exercise. So we should also pick chairs that have armrests to use to push up on. If there are not armrests, you can have your hands on the chair itself, but I prefer us to have a chair like a kitchen chair to practice this exercise from. Our bottom is forward in the chair, our feet are back, okay, pretty much as far as they can get comfortably because we want them underneath our weight when we begin to lift that weight over top of the feet. Hands go on the armrests. Now, the mistake that a lot of people make is that they think that when they stand, they should be moving their body straight up. So they will stand up this way, and if you try that, it's actually more difficult on your legs. It requires more power to stand with your body going straight up. What I would like you to practice is after your bottom is forward, your feet are back, and your hands are in place, I want you to push in a forward direction so you're going to move your body more towards the wall ahead of you, rather than move your body towards the ceiling. Once you get your body and your bottom up moving forward, then you can stand up and be straight up. Okay, so you're going to lean your shoulders forward, get your nose over your toes or ahead, and slowly, carefully, thinking about your balance, push in a forward direction and then come to full standing. Sitting back down is the reverse. You lean forward, hands go back, bend the knees, and your bottom returns to where it began. Okay, so again, let me reiterate, let me repeat exactly the same process. You're sitting and let's say it's time to do the exercise. Bring your bottom to the front of the chair. That's number one. Move your bottom to the front of the chair. Number two, your feet come back as far as they can get underneath you. That's two. Number three, hands on the armrests or hands on the chair itself. That's three. Number four, we're bending forward. Number five, we're pushing forward. Number six, we're standing straight up. Then we're reversing everything. Tilt forward with the shoulder, shoulders reach back, return your bottom to the front of the chair, and then you can move back and scoot back and relax when you're finished the exercise. Now, what I believe is that counting an exercise, counting the repetitions of an exercise, can actually have a negative impact on the end result physiologically in what the body is feeling in terms of what you're trying to accomplish from that exercise. So most people that have experience with exercise in the past will always gravitate towards a number like 10 or 15 because they're nice round numbers in an exercise class. You know somebody may have told you well you should do 10 repetitions of this and then move on to the next exercise. Strengthening of your body happens in the last few repetitions that you can actually tolerate. So what I want you to do is do as many of these as you can carefully and slowly until your body says you need to take a break. When your body says you need to take a break, by all means, sit down and then you've banked the benefit from pushing your body to a limit. Your body will start to recognize that it needs to develop strength and endurance because you're asking it to do more and that's the whole key with this exercise as a foundation for all the other stuff that we recommend on our channel. It's the number one exercise that I have for older adults. I give it to every single patient that I have regardless of what they're struggling with. So again, remember that we're trying to do as many repetitions as possible until your body feels like it needs to take a break. Now your body will tell you how often you can do this exercise. If you start with this exercise once or twice today, tomorrow, your body will speak to you. If you're not used to exercising, your muscles may be sore and your muscles will say, 'Hey, keep it at one or two times a day for now until we get used to this.' If your body does get used to it really quickly, you can do this quite often through the day, even every hour as it might be able to kind of break up your day and let your brain and your system kind of get a feeling that it's moving around and wanting to move around more often. And then that system starts to change and starts to build muscle and build strength in the muscle. None of us are going to be Arnold Schwarzenegger from this exercise so we don't need to worry about that. We're just trying to build power so that you have it when you need to get up from a chair, get out of bed, go up and down the steps, step down from a curb, walk outside on uneven surfaces. And this will also help improve your balance. We hope you like this video. Click like, click subscribe, subscribe to the channel. I have more content coming that is helpful for older adults who might be struggling with any of these issues. Have a great day." www.achievarehab.com info@achievarehab.com 888-929-7677

  • Your Health is Closely Connected to Your Wardrobe...Am I Right or Am I Right?

    It struck me the other day how at varying points of our lives, we have different outfits that we wear for different reasons.  And my thesis suggests that we can determine how healthy we are by how many outfits we use during the week.  Strange way of thinking, huh?  Or is it? You see, in my world as a Physical Therapist, I’m constantly aware of how often and how well people are moving.  It’s my job to help people move as best as they possibly can…that’s the basis of every patient we see…the end result is to make people move better because there is a direct and strong connection between how well people move and their overall health.  Studies have proven that people that are more mobile and active as a matter of habit stay out of the hospital, need less medication and doctor visits and live a longer, healthier life.  Those facts guide my professional and personal life. So, now back to the clothes that you wear.  When you are a young child, you have pajamas, school clothes, uniforms for sports like baseball or basketball, uniforms or outfits for other activities such as scouting or performing in a band or instrument recital, church clothes, play clothes and so on.  That’s arguably the time in our lives where we are most mobile and active and of course, the time when we are least likely to have any medical concerns whatsoever.  Our health is at its peak. Then, we move onto adulthood…the number of ensembles that we have in rotation is less.  Pajamas, work clothes, clothes for around the house, clothes for working outside on your property, perhaps clothes for hobbies like golfing or bowling or gardening, church clothes, and occasionally formal attire.  That’s still a fair number of options that we need in our closets but less than we had in our youth.  And as we know, most people in this stage of life remain pretty healthy and very mobile for the most part.  Are you seeing the connection?  Seems legitimate! Let’s move to older adulthood beyond the time when young family may no longer be living in your home, beyond your working years into retirement.  You’ve got pajamas, around the house clothes, perhaps clothes related to hobbies or working on your property.  Total outifts needed continue to decline.  In later years, hobbies likely go by the wayside and your mobility might move to a point where you have maybe two sets of clothes…one for home and one for outside the home. It is at this point where we see people moving less and certainly that connects to their weakest state functionally and their most fragile state related to their overall health.  The connection could not be clearer…the more outfits you wear on a regular basis, the more mobile and functionally capable you will be and your health with benefit greatly. To me, it’s all connected and could even be used as a benchmark to manage your health. So, every once in a while, think about how many times you change your clothes in a week and how many different looks you have, and you will have a pretty good idea of how healthy you are.  The bottom line…the more activities that you are involved in, the more outfits you will need.  The more outfits you need, the more you will be moving and the healthier you will be.  So, do more and you will have a longer, healthier life…that’s my thesis and I’m sticking to it! If you can be happy when it comes down to wearing your very last outfit, you’ve lived a great life and that’s what this is all about…helping people live their best life!  Be well and do good!! www.achievarehab.com 888-929-7677 info@achievarehab.com Facebook: Achieva Rehab: In-Home Physical Therapy

  • Grip Strength!! Your Most Vital of Vital Signs if You Want to Be Healthy and Mobile???

    Hi, if you've ever been concerned with cardiac health or you've thought about having better balance, stronger bones, stronger muscles, better mobility, better cognitive functioning, and memory, there may be one thing that you are overlooking that you should keep track of as you get older. Today, I want to talk about the one vital sign that nobody is thinking of, and that is grip strength. So when we think about vital signs and things that are regularly measured when you go to your doctor for a regular checkup, we are thinking of things like blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rate, and more advanced than that if necessary, we're thinking of blood sugar levels, and still more advanced than that, there are things like VO2 Max and things like that that will determine a connection to your overall health and your health going forward and can sometimes be looked at as predictors of what your health and your mobility might look like as you get older. Grip strength is becoming more increasingly under the microscope for healthcare experts as something that correlates very heavily with the things we mentioned earlier. So there are tons of studies that are out there in very recent times that demonstrate that grip strength is highly correlated with cardiac health. It's correlated with the chance that you are going to have a negative cardiac event in your near future. For example, if you are an older person and your grip strength is on the lower side of what is considered normal, the odds of you having an issue with your heart or your cardiovascular system increases. So weaker grip strength means poor cardiac health. The same relationship is across the board for balance, speed of movement, strength, endurance, cognitive limitations in memory, bone density, even. So all of these measures of health and all of these things that we need to be able to move better, move longer, and live a healthier life can all be sort of correlated back to what your grip strength is. Now, that certainly does not mean that somebody who has very strong hands and cannot walk up the stairs, that the strong hands will overtake the rest of what they're going through and their mobility. What we're saying is that you can easily determine how the rest of your health is and the rest of your functional mobility is by simply being more aware of your grip strength. So what I like to think about is, for me, it's easy to test grip strength, we have an ability to do so. But for you as the listener and the watcher of this video, my thought process is that you simply just have to be aware of your grip strength because it could raise a red flag or give you a sort of a reminder that, hey, maybe you need to start exercising a little bit more in general to keep your entire body in shape, your entire level of mobility in shape because we use our hands so often during the day. There may come a point in your life where you start to feel, wow, it's really a lot harder to open this jar than it was a year ago, or I find myself asking for help to carry a gallon jug of milk and place it in the refrigerator because my hands just don't feel like they're going to hold it, or I can no longer carry three bags of groceries into the house, I can only carry one at a time because it just feels like my hands are not going to be strong enough to do that. Any measure of your real life where you start to think about when you're using your hand and it feels like it doesn't have the strength that's required to do the job in the way it may have in an earlier time of your life, that is just a signal to me that your overall wellness, your overall health, your overall strength and balance need to be worked on. So the idea with this video is not to present you with a series of exercises that will only improve your grip strength. I can do that, but it would be missing the point. You see, if somebody is overall very weak, let's say you have a gentleman or a woman in their 70s or 80s, and they have trouble getting out of a chair, they have trouble walking fast the way they did when they were younger, they have trouble with their balance, you know, things have just slowed down for them for one reason or another, they're probably going to have grip strength that has also slowed down. So if I take that person and I only focus on improving their grip strength, I may be able to improve it by 25%, 50%, 100% even. But if we neglect the other things, the improvement in grip strength will not improve your cardiac health, it will not improve your balance, it will not improve your bone density. Remember, this is just a correlation, and it's easy, like I said earlier, for you to recognize in your daily life when you're using your hands, the more difficulty you are experiencing using your hands, the more your body overall needs exercise. So one way you could kind of test things in a formal way is also a very rudimentary exercise that we might use, but you can regularly kind of just get a sense. It's not a measurement, it's not a direct metric where you can write it down and say, my grip strength is 110 pounds. It's just a general kind of a sense that you can get by doing it on a regular basis and then in your memory comparing that to an earlier time. So basically, what you're going to do is you're just going to grab a regular towel. Okay, so this is just a bath towel, a shower towel, and what you want to do is you want to roll the towel on opposite ends as if you're ringing out fluid from the towel. If it was a wet towel and you're trying to ring it out, one hand is going one way, the other hand is going the opposite direction, and you're really getting a tightness in the middle. So again, this can be an exercise to improve grip strength if you're into really doing that and focusing on that. But to me, it's just a way for you to get an idea on how your grip strength is being maintained as you age. Okay, so I want you to get this and really tighten it and ring it and then you're going to further ring it as if you're trying to ring every drip out, every drip out, and you just repeat that over and over and you roll up on it and you repeat it and you squeeze and you'll get a sense for what that feels like, and then you simply turn it around to focus on the opposite side. Okay, now again, this can be an exercise, but what I want you to do is I want you to use that as a way to sort of just really qualitatively measure how your grip is doing, along with how you feel your grip is doing in your everyday life. Very, very easy, very rudimentary and basic way of just getting a feeling, and one day you might do that and you might be like, hey, this doesn't feel like I can ring this as strongly as I could six weeks ago or eight weeks ago. I want you to use that information, and I want you to increase the exercises that you're doing on a regular basis. A daily exercise program is beyond the scope of this particular video. You certainly will find many things on this channel relative to daily exercise that you can follow, but the point of this exercise, the point of this video, is to give you another way to just really grossly and simply measure how you are measuring up when it comes to your overall health. And then if you realize that something as simple as feeling a strong grip and maintaining the ability to grip strong and do things with your hands, it probably means that you're also doing things that benefit your heart. You're also doing things that benefit your bone density. You're also doing things that benefit your balance and your walking speed and your endurance and your cognitive capabilities because they're all connected. So keep your grip strength up, measure it regularly with this very, very simple kind of a test. Listen to your body when you're doing everything on a daily basis with your hands, and if you're realizing that your hands aren't doing as well as they had in prior months or weeks or years, do more exercise. Do exercise more often. You'll find a bevy of different ways to exercise appropriately and specifically for different needs in your body on this channel as time goes on. And certainly, the internet has become a wealth of knowledge and a resource for those same things for elderly people who are trying to really take control of their health, take control of their health span, and live a longer life that is mobile, happy, and functional. So again, make sure before you engage in any exercises that you check with your doctor first. The advice that I give you is very general, and it can be extremely helpful, but you have to make sure that your body is ready for the things that I may teach you. So again, remember grip strength: the stronger your grip is, the more likely you are to have good cardiac health, good bone density, good balance, good strength, good endurance, good memory, and cognitive capabilities. When you have all those things and they're in good shape, your life is probably doing pretty well. And that is the goal of this video: to use movement to make your life a happier life, a better life, and a more satisfying life as you get older. www.achievarehab.com https://www.youtube.com/@JoelDigris-TheMovementApproach/videos

  • PTs and Sign-On Bonuses...Let's Reverse Engineer That!

    Over the past several weeks, I’ve seen outrageous offerings to healthcare providers in terms of sign on bonuses. I've heard on radio ads upwards of $20,000 for a sign on bonus for RNs, and believe me, I am not writing this to say that we as healthcare providers, especially nurses, do not deserve that. But as physical therapists, the way business works, to see sign on bonuses in the thousands of dollars for PT's and PTA’s causes me to step back a little bit. Think about this as a foundation for this discussion: The largest physical therapy outpatient provider in the nation has a publicly reported profit margin of about 4 to 5%. This means that the company as an entity only keeps about 4 to 5% of the total amount of money that they make. By proxy in most circumstances, the majority of providers of physical therapy, both large and small across the country that operate under the same insurance reimbursement model, and have the same types of expenses should also be producing a very similar profit margin. No pun intended, that profit margin leaves very little margin to add expenses such as sign-on bonuses. In the world of physical therapy, the largest expense to a company is the cost of a good staff. So, how can a company offer for example a $5000 sign on bonus when they are generating a five or even a 10% profit margin? The likely answer is that business is a give and take and when they give you 5k, they may take your time in return and you are likely going to have to work harder, and see more patients in your day in order for the revenue to cover your sign on bonus, and you’re ever increasing salary. In my opinion, that $5000 upfront bonus can slowly suck the life out of you personally and professionally because all big operations have to look at profit first rather than patient's first. The term "PT Mill" was generated long ago and represents the way that clinics had to increase their visit numbers and see multiple patients at once simply in order to counteract the continous and repeated cuts of reimbursement. One of the great overriding tenets of my life is that the only valuable currency that we have is time. Sure, young therapists, just starting out on their own with no family who are geared up and full of vigor can go out and really benefit from that large sign on bonus, but my hope is that most clinicians would rather be given time. Time to spend one on one with their patients so that they can give them everything they need and give them the best chance at an outcome that they deserve. Time to actually go home and spend with family. Time to have a life outside of your profession. I believe that providing physical therapy is absolutely essential for many health issues, and should be considered much more valuable than it is in the continuum of care and the healthcare spectrum in totality, but that is another topic. I would urge you to think twice about the money and think more about your impact and your ability to successfully impact your patients, as well as what you are giving up because you are receiving a lump sum on the front end of a signature. Can you have your cake and eat it too? To go along with this information, there are companies that actually do one on one physical therapy sessions which are way more valuable than cookie cutter, double up the schedule systems. They too are providing offers with a lot of coin in the form of a sign on bonus. Research these online and you’ll find plenty of information....information about the take part of the give and take. Certainly, most of you are not old enough to remember the television show the facts of life. The theme song had lyrics that said: "You take the good, you take the bad, you take them both, and there you have the facts of life." The overwhelmingly attractive good in these offers is the dollar sign followed by a four or five digit number. The problem with a company giving is that it’s all about math, and they have to find a way to take in order to be balanced in their bottom line. When you get a sign on bonus, you’re often locked into a multi year commitment, clauses in your contract that indicate when you may have to pay back your sign on bonus, productivity quotas, which, if they are not met, will affect your salary, a lower starting, or lower average salary for the work that is being done, and certain other things like unpaid travel, unpaid meetings, no compensation for equipment, etc. The list of things that a company can take from you is longer than what they can give back in a great deal of instances. My advice to you if you read this far is to ask a boatload of questions based on this information when you are chasing the money. The money may be certainly worth some of the headaches that come along with taking the offer but be educated. If your goal is to make a decent living being as effective and helpful as you can in our profession, I would consider a company that pays you a higher perdiem rate, sees patients one on one, pays for travel, pays for meetings as needed, provides a 401(k) benefit , gives you free reign autonomy over your schedule, and one that is run by a physical therapist who makes company choices not only based on the bottom line dollar, but based on the happiness and success of the clinicians in the company knowing that their patients will be getting their best. We may not be the only one, but Achieva Rehabilitation is certainly one of those companies. So, as I’ve encouraged you to do, please reach out to us and ask us questions. We would love to see if we might be a fit for what your professional goals are at this point. www.achievarehab.com info@achievarehab.com #inhomephysicaltherapy #physicaltherapyworks #choosept

  • Your Life.. Do You Want Quality or Quantity? Or BOTH!

    If you are 50 years old or older, I'd like to lay a foundation for your future, a future with more time living life to the fullest. The average lifespan has gone up over time, currently to about 79 years. That means that we as humans are living longer. On average, from birth to death, we are experiencing 79 years of life. But does that mean we are living for all of those 79 years? No. The problem is that as we've gained years in our lives, we've not gained life in our years. The period of time where we are able to be active and healthy remains at only 66 years. That is known as your "healthspan". This is the time in our lives where we are living free of chronic disease and age related deficits and pretty much able to enjoy our lives. The number of years relative to your healthspan has actually gone down. So, who wants to live longer only to suffer longer? In general, Robert Harrington, MD, who is president of the American Heart Association (AHA) and chairman of the department of medicine at Stanford University, says there are a few stand-out reasons for the disparity between lifespan and healthspan. "More Americans are obese, have diabetes, and other chronic diseases than at anytime in recent decades," he says. "The onset of these diseases, in part influenced by social determinants of health, is occurring at younger ages, which means that many are at risk for having less optimal health for a larger portion of their overall lives." In other words, Americans are being diagnosed with chronic, life-impacting health problems earlier than in the past, which results in less healthy years. 13 years of suffering from chronic disease or other issues related to poor health and mobility. 13 years!! I have children younger than that...imagine if I suffered with a subpar, non-active existence for that period of time. Imagine you have young grandchildren and you can't move well enough to bathe in the joy that they should be bringing to your life. I don't want to live longer just to suffer longer. The good news is that there are things that you can do about it. You can actually change your future. No, this is not some metaverse ploy...this is actual science and I am a scientist. You can actually do things today that will increase your healthspan. Remember, that is the time that you are living free of chronic disease and age related deficits and enjoying your life. Even if you have chronic disease, you can still benefit from some lifestyle discipline and improve your healthspan. Identifying the most important things you can do to remain well is something that is very important to me and I want to help anyone who is reading this do the same. There are five things in general that will help you increase your healthspan. Exercise Eath Healthy Don't smoke Maintain a Healthy Weight Limit Alcohol Intake Sounds simple but fully taking advantage of these recommendations requires a higher level of knowledge. And I want to continue to provide that for you. So, please stay tuned for more free information here and also look for a new program we are developing to help those that are 50+ lay the foundation for a better healthspan, a customized program for your individual life and future life. Be well and Do good! www.achievarehab.com #wellness #wellnesscoaching #physicaltherapy #inhomephysicaltherapy #wellnessprogram In the meantime, if you have any concerns already about the way you are living...balance problems, pain, movement disorders, weakness, please visit our webpage for free booklets filled with our best advice. https://www.achievarehab.com/

  • Yes, You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks

    I’ve been writing this column for a while now and I hope everyone that has read it has gained something from my expressed opinions. All I ever want is to be able to help people. It’s my job! And at 49 years old, I’ve been doing it for over two decades, so, I’m an “old dog”. Well, this old dog learned a new trick of sorts. Or, rather, I was awakened to the realization that I’ve been overlooking one skill while prioritizing others. You see, I believe that the human body is capable of much more than we think as a collective society. No matter what your age, I believe that if you are given the tools and strategies to do so, you can do amazing things. I’ve seen it firsthand. It’s the one overriding philosophy that I use in my practice as a physical therapist. But sometimes that philosophy clouds the need to support the human spirit as well as the body. I had a patient who I was driving really hard because I knew the potential he had to improve. We had worked hard in the past and his results were literally astounding…he was easily one of my top success stories. I was prioritizing a physical program that I knew would work but I failed to support his spirit by giving him kudos for his hard work and encouraging him rather than talking about how slow the progress was coming along this time. It served to defeat him to a degree that I simply was not seeing. I was so focused on what I know is possible that I wasn’t serving to buoy his spirit to help him emotionally get there. It is a terrible feeling to learn this lesson, but I am glad that it was verbalized as it will make me better at what I do going forward. There is a saying that “the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak”. Well, I want you to learn from my experience that sometimes “the flesh is willing, but the spirit is weak”. No matter the reason we are interacting with a person, we must try our best to see every interaction not only from your perspective but from THEIR perspective. I vow to do that better in my professional and personal lives everyday as I know it only helps me be more effective in both. The human body is capable of amazing things when the right tools and strategies are in place, but the human spirit is what drives the belief and fights the normal sense that we have limitations. Nothing great has ever been accomplished without a healthy human spirit. Old dogs can learn new tricks…my patients realize this because I ask them to work harder than they think is possible. My plans of care for my patients always include exercise, balance training, pain relief strategies, teaching etc. Those plans of care now automatically include what this old dog has learned, a need to fully support the human spirit. Please be good and do good!

  • Your Hands May Be the Key to Better Health

    Being heavily into music, I’ve seen Dan Rather interview professional musicians on his television show “The Big Interview” many times. He’s obviously very good at what he does. Not being a huge fan of the artist by the name “Jewel”, I was intrigued by this particular episode and clicked it on for a few minutes. Worth learning about, hers is a very inspirational story but the reason I’m writing this is because of one singular idea that she talked about…the fact that what your hands do can really tell a great deal about you. So, I thought about it and, well, put my hands to work to type this column up. “The hands are the servants of your thoughts”. If you regularly watch what your hands do, I believe it will tell you who you are as a person. All of your priorities, likes and dislikes, hobbies, your health status can all be demonstrated in what you do with your hands. What an amazing concept! Although I’m wowed by the idea of listing the many examples that come to mind when processing the idea of this theory, I’m a healthcare provider and it is my ultimate duty to try to make people realize the importance of their own health. So, what are your hands doing on a daily basis? Are they holding a smart phone and watching 20 second videos or scanning Facebook to see what everyone else is doing? Are they on your remote control flipping through hundreds of channels on the television to find something worthy? Are they working hard to do your job, take care of your family and home? Is there any time during your day where they are working to help you become or stay healthy and mobile so you can enjoy life with zest for as long as possible? If not, what should they be doing? Go to the grocery store and use your hands to pick up plenty of vegetables and fruits, lean meats and fish, foods that are not laced with preservatives, sugar and man-made trash ingredients. Use your hands to put down the processed foods, breads and candies that destroy your cells. Use your hands to hold a book that will teach you about good nutrition and exercise. Take a look at your hands as you do push-ups, jumping jacks. Take a look at your hands as you take a brisk walk, go for a bike ride or simply stand up and sit down from your chair as many times as you can in a row (my favorite exercise for everybody by the way). Put your hands to work for you…make that a priority and the rest of your body will thank you for years to come with the ability to get out and enjoy yourself. “The hands are the servants of your thoughts”. They can either serve you well through helping you exercise and eating correctly, or they can slowly contribute to the breakdown of your body as you get older. But they don’t act alone…your thoughts must guide your hands’ actions. I hope I’ve made you think more about your health and that I’ve given you a way to use the energy of your hands to help you live a healthier life. Be good and do good!

  • My Best Advice for Your Health? Use Your Time Wisely!

    If you are fortunate enough to have time to sit down and relax and look out into the world around you and think about how little you are compared to the grand size and expansion of the universe, it changes how you think about things. So too does reflection on just how short our time is here on earth. If we are lucky, we may live to see an 8 or 9 in front of our age. One of the things that I hope for myself, my family, and all of you is the ability to look back with no regrets. Within the context of my professional life, I believe deeply in a few things: The importance of exercise and the importance of eating to provide fuel for your body. If we take the time to take care of our bodies, the time we have to use those bodies to enjoy life should be extended as much as possible. That’s why we need to use our time wisely. Life today is filled with more sitting and watching other people do things through TV shows, social media etc. Life today is filled with more processed, unhealthy foods that are proven to take years from our lives. Years! A year has 525,600 minutes and some of life’s greatest moments are no longer than a minute! So, why not give yourself a chance to experience as many minutes as you can by taking care of yourself. Take the time to learn how to eat properly…use your TV show or social media time to do research. It’s not hard to find the best evidence on what is the best fuel for your body and what is actually damaging your cells. Start with getting rid of sugar and processed foods and stay out of the drive through. The rest is easy to find. Take time to move your body. Remember physics class? A body in motion tends to stay in motion. That is absolutely true for humans. Take time to learn how to exercise and what is appropriate for your age. Some activity is better than none. Move more and sit less. It helps your body AND your mind and your emotional well-being. The science is all over the internet…you know that little box you look at for hours a day…CDC.gov is a great source for this information. Use your phone or iPad time wisely! Did you know that the measure of your waistline is directly related to your health? It’s true. A Bigger waistline means fewer minutes of life. Exercise and eat right and you can change all of this. Whatever is important to you should make it important enough to prioritize. Gain back some minutes by starting to be healthier today. Use your time wisely! Be good!

  • PT - Do You Really Know What We CAN DO?

    When you hear physical therapy, you are probably like the vast majority of the population who have never had PT, the 93% of the population that don’t have a physical therapist on their healthcare team. You may think of someone in a gym with exercise equipment who is recovering from a sports-related injury. Or perhaps you think of someone in a hospital who is recovering from a stroke or a joint replacement in order to get back home. If Physical Therapy as a profession was in a beauty pageant, we would be “Miss Misunderstood” because what people think about physical therapy and physical therapists is literally a mere fraction of what we are and what we do. It’s like thinking that math is limited to 2 + 2 = 4. This limited perception of physical therapy is driven partly by a broken healthcare system that favors reactivity versus proactivity. Did you know that 37% of all complaints at a primary care doctor visit can be inexpensively and effectively addressed by a physical therapist? But, only 7% of the population engages in PT. Again, the math is wrong here. Many more patients should be seeing a physical therapist. We also live in a society that greatly prefers easy solutions and searches for instant gratification. You see, although the effects of physical therapy are much longer lasting, PT takes some work and time so it naturally takes a back seat to things like pills, injections, multiple doctor visits and everything that is commercialized as an easy fix to your problem. Look at big pharma..they are better at marketing than they are at developing medicines. You simply take their pill and you’ll be hopping around, smiling in the fields with your loved ones in no time. Wear this simple brace to take your pain away. Use this cane and you’ll be as steady as you were when you were a kid. Rub this on your knees and you’ll feel like Jesse Owens instantly. These things have changed our brains to gravitate toward the easy route when in reality, the root cause of problems is never addressed by these quick fixes. Did you know that physical therapists can work with cardiovascular and pulmonary patients, provide wound care, manage lymphedema, provide pelvic therapy for post-partum moms, help people get rid of dizziness and vertigo, help people improve their balance so they don’t fall, work with patients with Parkinson’s and Multiple Sclerosis live well and fight their disease at all stages. We work in hospitals, schools, nursing homes, emergency departments, and your home. We have advanced degrees and every therapist who graduates now is a Doctor of Physical Therapy. Because of Direct Access Legislation, many PTs also don’t even need a prescription from a doctor to provide you with excellent care right when you need it and we are educated enough to know when your problem might need a set of extra eyes to take a deeper look. We are MOVEMENT SPECIALISTS and people that move their best are also their healthiest. You don’t see flashy commercials for physical therapy but maybe you should. We can prove that physical therapy will help you find the way back to enjoying life the way you want to enjoy life. When your life is disrupted by pain, weakness, dizziness, falls, or movement challenges, think of physical therapy first despite our lack of television spots. You, the reader or viewer don’t see our commercials because they are in medical journals or in the reviews from patients who have had their lives changed by a physical therapist. We have proof, not actors. Physical Therapy is the best profession for you if you are physically struggling to enjoy life the way you want to enjoy life, no matter what your age or problem. Choose PT first. We are much, much more thank you think!! Be good and do good in 2022!

  • Stay Home. Stay Safe. But Don’t Stay Weak…Your Home Makes A Great Gym!

    When I started this column months ago, because I knew the topic would be everywhere, I wanted to avoid boring the reader with more talk of the pandemic. But there is a twist here, an angle worthy of comment. Pick something. Arthritis in your knee, back, hip. Problems with balance or dizziness. Movement challenges that come along with Parkinson’s Disease or Multiple Sclerosis. You name it…whatever physical issues you have to deal with will always be worse the less you move….always! So, it stands to reason that because we are all sitting around for what feels like years waiting for this thing to cease, our bodies have suffered from the loss of movement. The less you move, the worse your body functions AND the worse it feels! So, because you are also likely to be watching a lot more TV, I’m going to interrupt this regularly scheduled program with an infomercial: I’m here to provide you with an exciting, revolutionary, game-changing, life-boosting, supersized new health improvement product (read obviously in that cheesy infomercial style voice)! Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you…YOUR HOME!! What!!?? My HOME is a revolutionary health improvement product? Absolutely! In my In-Home Physical Therapy program, we use the patient’s home in creative ways to help them get stronger, improve their balance, and reduce their pain. Gym equipment? Pfft! Use your home and get creative while you are stuck there to not only prevent the challenges above, but to get better! You see, the human body needs to be tested over and over again in order to improve. But the test doesn’t have to be conventional gym equipment. Gyms have stair climbers…you have stairs!. Gyms have leg press and squat machines…you have chairs! In balance therapy, some clinics have specialized equipment that makes you wobble…your home has couch cushions to do the same! The good news is the body can’t discriminate between a chest press machine and a pushup. Take a 12-year-old boy who is on his first day in the fields for his family farm. Scrawny, weak, thin. Now take that same boy 6 years later after the work that is required of the industry and you will have a strong, tough, solid man…his body adapted to being tested because it needed to in order to pass the tests on the farm every day. All this without touching one barbell or machine. And all basically from home. For me, the home is an effective gymnasium if you change how you see it. If you change your thought process, you can change the outcome. Stand up from your chair as many times in a row as you can. Grab two soup cans and push them toward the ceiling. Put your hands on the wall at shoulder height and do wall pushups. Walk up and down your steps and extra 4-5 times per day or go for a walk outside if you can do it safely. And by all means, do not sit for longer than an hour at a time…yuck! There are not enough lines in this column to allow a complete list of ideas on how you can use the home to improve strength, balance, and even reduce pain. But I’m hoping to have sparked your interest in how to look at things a bit differently realizing that being stuck at home can be liberating. Your home, your world is a gym and can benefit you greatly if you take the right action. So, stay home. Stay safe. And keep moving! Oh! And because you own the “gym”, you get free membership for life! Make it a good life. Be good and do good!

  • My Caveman Theories...That Geico Guy is Healthy!

    Think of all the illustrations that you've seen about prehistoric cavemen over the years. They all had things in common. They were all long-haired, relatively unkempt, wore torn and ragged animal hides as clothing, carried a stick, hovered around a fire perhaps. Aside from those facts is one detail that sticks out like Big Bird on Sesame Street. That one detail should mean a great deal to the world today and it may just be the trick to living a healthy life. What is it? You've never seen a caveman who is not physically fit. Go ahead, find an illustration that is not a cartoon variance like the Flintstones that actually shows an unhealthy appearance of a caveman (or woman). I bet you can't! It's crazy! The "Oh Wow!" moment comes when you compare and contrast the physical stature of humans 200,000 years ago to humans today. We live in an unhealthy society today in my opinion. (Really, it's a fact.) In our business with Achieva Rehab, we see the end result of people abusing their bodies for many years. Pain, disease, weakness, posture changes etc. We think they can be prevented. So, why should we start thinking that the lifestyle of the caveman could give us some clues as to how to live longer and be more independent and mobile well into our golden years? Simple, they ate what was available to them from the land in plants, and they also ate meat from animals which they hunted. Think about that...two things to digest here. One, they had to move in order to get their food or they would starve. When was the last time you hunted a steak or a hamburger? Movement is medicine and there is a great deal of proof out there that supports my assertion...the more you move, the more healthy you will be. And, the less you will require medical care. Your posture, your strength, your balance will remain good for much longer if movement is a priority. The caveman was constantly moving and the result is a human that was much more physically fit. Through research, a natural movement expert, Erwan Le Corre, was able to determine that prehistoric man had to be able to do these things on a daily basis to survive (Can you do these things?): 1. Get into and out of a deep squat without using hands and hold for 30 minutes. 2. Be able to walk 20 miles per day. 3. Be able to hang from a tree and climb into that tree. 4. Carry an object of your body weight for half a mile without rest. 5. Be able to swim in rough waters for at least ten minutes. The second thing to think about here is that their food was eaten purely to live. They did not have the option to eat for enjoyment. Now, don't get me wrong...I love a good chicken wing or a nice juicy steak, but, an improper diet is the number one reason for people being unhealthy in my opinion. Sugary drinks, fat filled snacks, processed breads and simple carbohydrates, and fast food...ugh, don't get me started! Along with a country of people that are not properly educated on how to live healthy, these are the foods that slowly break down the human body and make people struggle physically later in life, if not ealier. They simply were not available 200,000 years ago. I'm sure cavemen would have taken their foot propelled vehicles to the drive through if they were, but, I digress. What is the lesson here? Is it to wear loin cloths and grunt and rarely shower? The bottom line is to implement two simple rules into your life. Move more than you sit. And, know what you are putting into your body in terms of food...and make choices not on the minutes that the food spends in your mouth, but, the days, weeks, months, and years that are ahead of you. Live your best life so that you can do the things you want to do well into those golden years. We would love to help you learn more and certainly have programs available to you to regain independent and mobile so that you can experience days, weeks, months, and years of joy! www.achievarehab.com 1-888-929-7677

  • Inquisitive Are You? FAQs for Our Online PT Program.

    You've got questions..we've got answers! Wait! You've got answers...we've got questions! 🤔 Jeopardy always confused me...anyway, a lot of people are contacting us with these same questions about our brand new "Online PT" program and how it works and more importantly how it can help them as much as our "In-Home PT" program. So, we've compiled the FAQs and hope this helps you to want to reach out if you are having some difficulty due to pain, dizziness, poor balance, or mobility concerns. You don't have to wait for the world to re-open to get the help you need. 🤔  Here is how Telehealth works… ​ ✔️  As long as you have internet service, it's literally as easy as turning on your phone, your tablet, or your computer and clicking on a few buttons.  You see us and we see and hear you just like we would if we were together in your home. ✔️  Each session will last about 30 minutes-60 minutes depending on your specific needs and the quality of life outcomes we are moving towards. During the session we will get an update on your progress and move your program ahead just like in a normal PT session.  We will have you go through your exercises with 1-on-1 instruction and correction if needed.  And of course, upgrade as able. ​ ✔️  The treatment will be conducted using a simple video system on your phone, your tablet, or your computer.  Our program uses Zoom.com ​ ​ 🤔  Will you help me find out if my insurance will pay for this? ​ ☑️  Please message us here or fill out the form from the button below for your FREE FIRST ONLINE PT SESSION and we will contact your insurance company to get your detailed benefits.  With the current times, most insurance companies have approved this program without question.​ 🤔  Can I use my laptop or an iphone or ipad? ​ ☑️  We've been using our Online Physical Therapy Program with many different devices with our patients.  This includes all types of laptops, computers, ipads, iphones, android devices.  As long as you have internet, we are 99.9% sure it will work.  The only thing we are more certain of is that you will get better! ​ ​ 🤔  Will I need equipment? ​ ☑️  Our program rarely requires equipment.  You should set up in a room with a comfortable amount of space to move, comfortable clothes and we will figure out the rest. ​ ​ ​ 🤔  Will this work with people like me? I'm a little skeptical... ​ ☑️  Studies support what we've seen... great results with patient with pain, dizziness or vertigo, mobility challenges from movement disorders, balance issues, joint replacement.  We will be able to determine your likelihood of success during the FREE FIRST ONLINE PT VISIT. ​ ​ ​ 🤔  I'm sure that I will have questions...can I call you to get quick answers? ​ ☑️  Our biggest policy is our Grandma Standard, meaning that we are going to treat you with the same care and advice and attention that we would give to our own Grandma.  So, anytime Grandma calls, we answer...same with you.  We are available at 1-888-929-7677 before you start, during your time with us, and after you meet your goals. ​ ​ ​ 🤔  How can you help me get better if you don't have equipment? ​ ☑️  We have never needed equipment.  You get better because you care more about your health than being in a gym with fitness equipment.  Our experience in our In-Home PT Program has proven 100s of times that our teaching, assessment, and education are way more valuable than gym equipment.  See what our past patients have to say to support our methods...We always think their words are more important that what we say anyway...Click HERE. ​ ​ ​ 🤔  Technology scares me...Can I actually do this? ​ ✔️  The resounding answer is a definite "YES".  If you can check email, use facebook or Google on your device, our brand of Online Physical Therapy is EASY to manage! We've got more information on how this works on our dedicated page. Click HERE to learn more about our "Online PT" Program or take the easy, old-school route and give us a call at 1-888-929-7677. Hope you are very well! Joel J. Digris, Owner Achieva Rehabilitation www.achievarehab.com

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