Rolling is a popular soft tissue intervention for range of motion, performance, and pain relief. Participants have a wide variety of tools to choose from including foam rollers, lacrosse balls, and sticks. Each tool is designed to target an individual sore or painful spot (trigger point) in a given muscle or a tight long muscle...
There are few clinical examples that remind me of how far we have come in orthopedic Physical Therapy practice than assessing bony SI landmarks. As the popular clinical pendulum swung these landmarks were assessed in patients presenting with low back pain to hip pain and even to distant regions such as ankle and neck. Thankfully,...
Running related injuries are very common with studies reporting up to 90% of athletes reporting an injury preventing them from training or competition. Many groups including Physical Therapists are interested in reducing this injury risk through training volume modifications, shoe selection, strength training, and gait retraining. Despite popular internet opinions, research has not concluded on...
Researchers continue to explore the health benefits of resistance or strength training. One area which has expanded in recent years is the impact of resistance training on early deaths associated with diseases including cancer and heart disease. In comparison, aerobic exercise has been shown to reduce the risk of early death associated with these diseases,...
Blood pressure is an established vital sign given its’ ability to inform clinicians on the status of multiple organ systems in the body. Most commonly, blood pressure is utilized to assess the workload on the cardiovascular system as it maintains circulation to the body under different levels of stress and disease states. Importantly, blood pressure...
In the mid 1960s a Japanese electronics manufacturer being to produce one of the first commercial pedometers measuring an individual’s steps over a given period. This business also provided us with a marketing slogan designed to increase our steps per day to 10,000 or roughly 5 miles per day. Certainly we will not argue with...
The cost of living across the front range of Colorado has increased significantly over the last decade and it is hard to find a large city which has not seen population growth. The basic laws of supply and demand are at play in many consumer products, most noticeable in real estate. Unfortunately, reimbursement for Physical...
Post operatively, I am normally concerned with two presentations in patients. Patient’s with significant post operative range of motion and those with minimal to no pain have the highest risk of tearing their repaired tissues due to the lack of protection from either stiffness or post operative pain. Patients may incorrectly assume the absence of...
Aerobic exercise has long been established as an effective intervention for improving cardiovascular or heart health markers such as blood pressure, cholesterol, insulin sensitivity, and aerobic capacity (VO2 max). It was provided a significant head start among researchers studying the impact of exercise on measurements of health. Resistance or strength training was initially studied on...
Our healthcare industry is a tremendous force in our country coming in at $3.5 trillion dollars per year and 18% of our gross domestic product. Despite spending approximately $10,000 per American we fall behind other countries in the world on many important health quality measures. The Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care is a very interesting...