Lessons to learn from Olympians

With the close of the Olympics I wanted to blog about lessons learned from the games.  I saw a great article at the beginning of the games about Six Things We Can Learn from Olympians.  I had one I wanted to add to the list and would love to hear comments from everyone what things they have learned.

I often wonder in today's day and age and the emphasis put on individualism, if we forget how important it is to have good coaches.  Watching the Olympians you realize that you are truly watching the best athletes in the world at their specific sports.  Their physical feats and mental concentration is amazing.  But behind every athlete is a set of coaches, trainers and others that have prepared them to go for the Gold.  So if the greatest athletes in the world need a team of coaches to allow them to perform at optimal levels, why don't each of us also look to find some coaches to help us in our life.  Do we look for people and advice from experts to help us with our body, mind and spiritual growth and development.  Our bodies, minds and spirits are constantly changing, the question is how are they changing?  Is it for better or worse?

As a physical therapist, I enjoy the opportunity daily to help coach my patients to improve their physical health and optimize their function.  Hopefully we can all find coaches to help us on a regular basis to improve our body, mind and spirit and not have to wait until injury or ill health to search out a coach to help us.

What other lessons have any of you came away with during these Olympic games?

Back Pain - Now What?

Estimates are that 9 out of 10 people will experience back pain at sometime in their life.  Having back pain is the fifth most common reason to visit a doctor in the U.S.  So with such prevalent numbers of occurrences, one would think we would be pretty good at treating it and have some consensus on the best methods.

Sorry, I'm not going to be able to cure everyone's back pain that reads this posting, but hopefully give you some valuable insights into finding your answers.  Also I am not going to argue for the best method to fix their back pain.  Obviously there are lots of "so called" experts that through their marketing and advertising can convince you they can cure it all in just a few simple steps.  But if this was truly the case I don't think we would see the numbers of occurrences staying the same as we have over the decades with no large changes in reduction.  Remember as health care providers we have specialties that we are trained in to solve problems.  A physical therapist, like myself, is going to use exercise and manual therapy (hopefully not many modalities such as ultrasound and electrical stimulation, as the research is not very good they actually provide much change).  Chiropractors will use their manipulation skills.  Surgeons will use surgery.  Physicians will use medication.  A massage therapist will use massage.  Acupuncturist will use acupuncture.  We are going to use what we know, and believe that is what you need.  So don't be surprised if you see a surgeon and he suggests surgery and when you talked to a different health care provider they didn't suggest surgery.

The other upsetting part is that there are some usual standard care guidelines, that research has shown to be most effective are not always followed through with by many general care practioners as found in this study.  And as pointed out in another study sometimes we have become to dependent on imaging to try and diagnosis everything.  While diagnostic imaging has made great advancements in the last few decades and has given us pictures of inside the body, we need to remember that the picture doesn't always tell us all the answers.

So what should you do if you have back pain?  Find a health care practitioner that you can trust and is up to date with current standards of care.  They should be open to other methods other than their own to assist you in your back pain.  They should be able to give you detailed explanation as to why you are having pain based on their findings from their evaluation as well as other tests such as imaging.  They should be able to back up everything they plan on doing with current research (check to see if they read current research, if not I would be cautious).  Realize that most back pain is not seriously life threatening, yes an inconvenience, but not life threatening.  It can usually be treated with conservative measures and not surgery as pointed out in this study.  If you do suffer from persistent/chronic low back pain I suggest that you learn to understand more the mechanisms of pain further.  I would suggest viewing Neil Pearson's 3 part webcast or get the book Explain Pain.

Talented And Gifted - Tag your it!!!

My 13 year old son, Tyler, confirmed my longstanding disappointment with the Talented And Gifted (TAG) program in schools.  If you don't have such a program in your school district be glad in some ways.  What it is for those of you who may not be aware, is a special program for kids in school that are excelling in a subject.  They are taken out of class to participate in the TAG program where they are challenged above the other students in their class.  While in general principle this is very good. As there have been studies that show some of our best and brightest students drop out of high school since they are not challenged enough so they drop out.  The problem lies for the many students, like my son, who don't get pulled out of class for TAG.  How would you feel if you weren't labeled talented and gifted.  Unfortunately to many of us have been told that at some time and we unfortunately believe it, thus preventing us from fully achieving our maximum potential God had planned for us.  While Tyler stated he was happy for his friend that got called out of class to participate in TAG, but he admitted he was sad that he never got called out.  While I tried to reassure him he was extremely talented and gifted in many ways and listed many of them for him, there was already some damage done to his self esteem.

My simple thought is, why can't they find at least one talent and gift in every child and pull every child out at sometime for a TAG program.  Could you imagine the child that unfortunately may never be looked upon as talented and gifted by their parents being able to go home and tell them they were pulled out of class to participate in a TAG program.

Another program that could use improving is the Presidential Fitness Award.  While again a great idea for rewarding children to partake in exercise and fitness, but why not create something that everyone could succeed in instead of just a few?  Check out a program proposed by Gary Gray, PT called Free2Play.

It's hard to believe programs like StrengthQuest by the Gallop Organization wouldn't work.  Or implementing more exercise into school to help with improved test scores, check out this short news story about exercise in school - Pumping up the Brain.

As Michelle Obama has pledge to help fight obesity.  I can only hope that some of these initiatives that promote increase self esteem for our children, who are all Talented and Gifted, in academics and fitness can be used.

While this probably seems like a lofty goal, I thought it was fitting to post on the night of the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and the 30 year anniversary of the Miracle on Ice.  I remember as a 9 year old listening to those words "Do you believe in miracles? YES!", and yes I always have.

So do you believe in miracles?  What ideas do you have to share on how we can improve our youths school system to help them succeed?

New Year remodel project

Well I was busy last weekend doing a little home improvement project and remodeling our master bath.  Ripping out the old outdated tile and cabinets and replacing them along with a fresh coat of paint.  So it got me thinking to see how everyone is doing one month into your personal remodeling project of your body, that is if you set any New Year's resolution to eat better and exercise more...most of us did.

It is hard to stay the course with diet and exercise even if we know it is important to help us live a longer, happier and healthier life.  Even though there is lots of research with study after study continuing to show the benefits of exercising to help improve our life.  But it is complicated to do the right thing and not as simple as having will power to do it.  An interesting study looking at people sticking to diet plans, which is usually just as hard for most as sticking to our exercise plan, had some interesting points.  It showed that the more complex your plan the more likely one would be to stop doing on a regular basis.  To take a quote from Gary Gray, PT a mentor of mine - "We need to get to the simple side of complexity".  Yes the proper diet and exercise programs can be made extremely complex especially when listening or reading some of the things that are out there, but huge gains can be made when sticking to a thought that follows the 80/20 rule.  You can get 80% of your benefits from exercise and diet by sticking to the easy 20% of simple principles in exercise and diet. Check out a few of my past posts on these core principles of exercise and diet.  Here is a great 10 step idea to help with weight loss success with your diet that can help as well.

Also for those that have gone so far and are obese we need to realize that this is a medically complex problem that needs serious attention.  We need to realize that often times an obese individual has an addiction problem and needs outside help to get going the right direction again.  Why people get obese is a very complex and individual for each person and not easily changed.  There was a great article to pointed to this mind shift that needs to change if we are to help the obese get healthy.

So you know it can be difficulty, so how do you fix it? Check this article out on setting the record straight.  We need to exercise more and eat less.  But keep it simple and realize it takes patience and persistence and if you are struggling you may need some outside help, and that's okay! - we weren't put on this earth to be alone we need each other.

What are some things you do to help keep yourself on track with your personal body remodel?