New Years Resolution: Focus on Your Body with Preventative Physical Therapy!
It’s almost the start of a New Year; a time to reflect on the past year and reevaluate your current lifestyle. What could you have done better last year and what do you want to change this year? New Year’s resolutions are the perfect time to make changes, set goals, and focus on the most important aspects of your life.
For many people, New Year’s resolutions come hand in hand with health. Starting a new gym membership, eating healthier, quitting bad habits, losing weight, etc. These are all great resolutions, but we have an even better one for you this year — TAKE CARE OF YOUR BODY AND GET PREVENTATIVE PHYSICAL THERAPY!
Every year we make sure (and are sometimes even required) to have an annual physical exam with your physician, a checkup/teeth cleaning with your dentist, a pap smear with your gynecologist, and a flu shot. These are all done with the mindset of prevention and catching ailments before they occur. It is important to look for signs of heart disease, osteoporosis, cancer, cavities and much more. What If you could also look for signs and symptoms of musculoskeletal injuries such as a low back pain, plantar fasciitis, knee pain, shoulder pain, and arthritis. What if you could avoid nagging pain and injuries that put a damper on your daily lifestyle, would you do it?
Well, you can and you should! You can see a physical therapist without a doctor prescription for a preventative musculoskeletal exam to take a look at your overall posture, range of motion, strength, mobility and functional movement patterns. You can learn about your body such as your postural deficits, inactive deep core and lack of hamstring flexibility that is about to cause that low back pain 80% of Americans face each year.
Did you know that your weak glut strength, tight ITB and flat feet is putting you at risk for knee pain and or knee osteoarthritis? Or that your poor posture at work is putting you at risk for neck and back pain?
Are you a competitive athlete that doesn’t want to be sidelined due to an injury? Are you a weekend warrior who is playing an intense game after being inactive all week at work? Are you a middle-aged adult that wants to be able to stay active, lose weight via safe exercise and feel good? Or are you an aging individual who wants to maintain good balance and be able to get up and down from the floor to play with your grandkids? These are all different stages of life that would benefit from a physical therapy checkup to learn about your body and to be educated on what exercises, stretches and movement patterns you should be doing to stay healthy and pain free.
In addition, most New Year’s resolutions are hard to keep because life gets busy and you don’t have a specific person holding you accountable. That is why we are recommending making your New Year’s resolution about physical therapy this year. Not only will you be educated about the specifics of your body, given exercises to improve your body but also have a personal healthcare advisor to keep you on track and make sure you are being compliant with your resolution.
You can book your physical therapy with betterPT by downloading the betterPT app and searching for a local clinic that accepts your insurance and has availability on the days you are looking for. Don’t wait, make your New Year’s resolution one that will last this year!
Looking forward to a healthy and happy 2018!
