30 Minutes Per Day

Could you give up a half hour for your health?  Physical therapists are often in contact with the general population, some who exercise religiously and some who have not exercised a day in their life.  Often after patients move on and become clients or reenter the community to continue with their own rehabilitation and fitness they start to do less and not participation in general fitness.  The story I always here is "I don't have time for that".

That is where Dr. Mike Evens comes in.  He is a physician who has a big interest in preventative medicine, as all health care professionals do.  Dr Mike Evens explains that "there are many things that you can do that are incredibly important for your health and I wouldn't want you to minimize your efforts in any one category. But I wanted to know, what comes first?"

In this viral video (watched over 3 million times), Dr Evens answers a challenging question: What is the single best thing we can do for our health?

Aide Training

Here at Hayashida and Associates Physical Therapy, we are extremely passionate about the profession and the care that you receive while you are here with us.  With this push for excellence, we also like to ensure that our staff is capable to providing the same quality of care as your therapist.    Physical Therapy aides are screened prior to hiring and evaluated on their desire to pursuit a career in health care.  This measure enables the physical therapist to assist in the development of the necessary skills towards becoming a physical therapist, strength and conditioning coach, or personal trainer. During their time at Hayashida and Associates, these individuals are pushed to continue towards and many achieve additional certifications in the strength and conditioning industry.  Just as the your therapist stays sharp with their evidence based practice, by attending seminars, labs instruction, teaching and reading literature, we believe that growth within our staff is important as well.  During their time at each clinic, aides are all continually trained in rehabilitative exercises and proper mechanics to ensure that the patient is able to strength the targeted area and reproduce the exercises with their home programs.   Multiple training sessions are made available so that the aides can assist us with your care

Written By: Riley O'Hagan, PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS

Outsource Your New Year’s Resolutions

You may sit there and read the title of today’s blog post and question, “That would be easy, send my New Year’s Resolution overseas and have someone else worry about it”.  But there is another meaning to outsourcing your resolutions.  When we make resolutions for ourselves we often make foolish ones such as, lose 60 lbs in 1 month, workout 7 days a week when you have never worked out before, or stop eating chocolate.  Although these resolutions may be helpful for your health they may be too ambitious or not change what you really want to change.  So it is time to outsource!  Ask your friends and family to pick resolutions for you.

Your loved ones will be able to give you ideas in a constructive way. “The idea is that when your friends and family point out where you might need to improve, it's more likely to have an impact on you than your own ideas do.”  The key for the friend, or you, if you are the one giving the advice for a resolution is to start with a positive one instead of just listing harsh criticisms.  The other nice part of outsourcing is the person who gives you the resolution acts as a second pair of eyes to make sure you are on the right track.

Ref: http://lifehacker.com/5871534/outsource-your-new-years-resolutions-to-make-them-stick
Ref: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204552304577114722549353752.html
Img: http://engage.networkdepot.com/Portals/154468/images/outsource%20button-resized-600.jpg

How to Make a New Year's Resolution

Do you know that almost half of all Americans make resolutions for the New Year?  Did you also know that only about 10% of these resolutions are successful?  So before we talk about different resolutions that would be good for your health and habits we first need to discuss how to make a resolution that you will stick to.  Luckily there are some scientific findings that can greatly help keep your resolutions.

1. Don’t make too many resolutions at once – “In an experiment conducted at Stanford, one group of students was given a two digit number to memorize while the other group was given a seven digit number. Afterwards, they were asked to walk down a hallway while holding that number in memory and presented with the option to eat a slice of cake or fruit salad at the end. It turns out that the seven digit memorizers were nearly twice as likely to choose cake over the fruit salad. It was as though memorizing the extra numbers took up ‘good decision making' space in their brain.”  The moral of the study is make one resolution that you can work on so you do not get distracted or spread yourself too thin.

2. Set a specific goal – “In health behavior change and maintenance studies, the effects of setting specific, difficult goals leads to higher performance when compared with no goals or vague, non-quantitative goals, such as "do your best.”  For example do not just make a goal of ‘eat better” or ‘lose weight.’  Instead you should make a goal that has a lot of detail such as ‘lose 10 pounds by April 15th

3. Tell Friends, Family and/or Coworkers about your goals. – “An experiment conducted on the effects of social support at the workplace concluded that weak social support often leads to elevated levels of heart rate and cortisol, which are indicators of anxiety and stress.”  Having the support during your time of change can greatly decrease the stress and help you achieve your goals.  This is the basis behind support groups of any manner (i.e. AA, Anxiety, etc).

We have only outlined a couple ways to make sure that you can make goals that work for you.  Also an idea on how to keep that goal as the year wears on.  Look out for our next post regarding further helpful hints and ideas regarding New Year’s resolutions.

Ref: http://lifehacker.com/5871955/the-science-behind-new-years-resolutions-and-how-to-use-it-to-achieve-yours

IMG: http://tomsworkbench.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/New-Years-Resolution-629x395.jpg

Avoid Hip Surgery

Often times people go to their primary care physician and/or orthopedic surgeon with complaints of hip pain only to be told they are "bone on bone" and need a cortisone shot or hip replacement surgery. Before jumping into more invasive procedures like surgery, a trial of PT can be amazingly beneficial in reducing pain, improving function, and avoiding hip surgery.

In a recent trial of 109 patients meeting criteria for hip osteoarthritis, the patients were split into 2 groups both with different outcomes. The first group received physical therapy exercises and the second group received a specialized program of manual hands on care combined with specific physical therapy exercise. For the patients in the second group improvements in pain, hip function,  ROM, and quality of life improved, was significantly higher, and remained after a 7 month follow-up (Hoeksma et al).

The physical therapists at HAPT have all been trained in the specific hands on treatment combined with exercises that were provided in this randomized controlled treatment trial. Please contact us if you have questions about hip pain and want to know if we can help. Having a detailed examination of your hip, low back and pelvis can keep you from needing invasive procedures and improve with low cost simple solutions.

Hoeksma, HL et al. Comparison of Manual Therapy and Exercise Therapy in Osteoarthritis of the Hip: A Randomized Clinical Trial. Arthritis & Rheumatism. 2004; 51: 722-729.

Written By John Kangas, PT, OCS

Research Institute of Human Movement

The Research Institute of Human Movement (RIHM) is a non-profit, charitable organization that was formed this year by Dr. Maury Hayashida. RIHM is the first non-profit organization of its kind with the sole purpose of conducting and publishing research on how human movement influences the quality and performance of life. RIHM seeks to provide the Santa Barbara community resources and education on how to better their lives by applying good research in human movement.

This has been an exciting past few months for RIHM as it received its official non-profit status in August and is now able to turn its attention toward finding partnerships and funding in order to mobilize many months of planning. Many research projects have been set forth and several initiated, examples include: athletic injury prevention/prediction testing, cognitive learning in elementary age children and its relationship to physical movement, relationship between genetic leg length discrepancy and lumbar spine mobility and many more. Currently, RIHM is finalizing 8 months of data collection on a study comparing the use of a visual feedback device compared to traditional verbal feedback on interventions for lumbar spine mobility exercise. This study hopes to provide insight into the effectiveness of both methods of teaching motor control of the lumbar spine in individuals who suffer from non-specific low back pain. The manuscript is anticipated to be submitted for publication in the Spring of 2013.
RIHM invites community participation. For further information about donating to its cause or to learn more about RIHM, go to our website: rihmsb.org.


Written By: Maury Hayashida, PT, DPT, OCS, CSCS

Physical Exercise Can Make You Smarter

Exercise is good for your body. – We have heard this before.

Exercise releases endorphins and improves your mood. – We have heard this before.

Exercise makes you smarter.  This may be something new to us.  New research from the journal, Genes, Brain, and Behavior shows that regular exercise not only helps with overall health but it can actually be essential in getting smarter and could help with cognitive activities.

In this study the researchers saw that “mice who exercised regularly were not only better able to complete cognitive tasks than those that didn't, but even more than mice that were provided with other cognitive games and toys. They loved the toys, but unless the mice exercised (eg, had access to a running wheel in their habitat), the researchers didn't see the changes in their brain that corresponded with the improved cognitive performance on their tests.”

It is always hard to compare animal studies with real life situations but the research in this article does point to the need for exercise for improvement in cognitive activities.  There obviously needs to be more research on humans to have conclusive evidence on cause and effect but this research reinforces a common thread that we have covered in this blog; we are moving beings and are built to be moving and active.  Physical activity leads to a more healthy life physically, mentally, and cognitively.  Contact your physical therapist at Hayashida and Associates Physical Therapy for information on our fitness programs.

Ref: http://lifehacker.com/5904961/regular-exercise-leads-to-a-healthier-smarter-brain

Ref: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1601-183X.2010.00674.x/abstract;jsessionid=87940EA8C9786FE153CF586F50AE40DB.d04t03

Img: http://img.gawkerassets.com/img/17ko1hbtyw2zkjpg/original.jpg