By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, CNPT, Cert-DN

Vitamin D is a crucial nutrient that can be obtained from the sun and has seemingly endless roles in human health. Despite our ability to gain vitamin D from the sun, most Americans are deficient, perhaps due to improper or lacking sun exposure, dietary patterns, or other reasons. Supplementation is simple, effective, and has been shown to have positive impacts on not just our bones -- it can help muscle strength, balance, and even the immune system for some patients.

Yet another role for vitamin D may be in the prevention of benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, or BPPV. BPPV is one of the most common neuro-otological conditions DPTs see in clinical practice. BPPV can leave patients with a spinning sensation, inability to sleep, and balance or fall issues. Physical therapists commonly treat patients with BPPV using the evidenced based technique known as the Epley Maneuver. Other treatments include patient education regar...

"D" in the in professional abbreviation DPT stands for Doctor, as in Doctor of Physical Therapy. Our profession has made great leaps and bounds in its stride to becoming experts in movement, the neuromuscular system, and wellness. Much of our success has been through diligent efforts to improve the educational standards of our PT students. We've also continually raised the bar by encouraging most States to enact stricter continuing education standards, licensing, and rigorous specializations and fellowships. Such training and advanced education, along with our doctorate, prepares us to provide care in direct access, primary care, wellness centers, rehab facilities, hospital, gyms, and sports complexes to name a few. We are managing simple injuries now without much of the red tape and bureaucracy, while helping those with devastating diseases and ailments get better. Despite all the progress I feel we still have a stock of PTs that are holding us back, especially in regards to adopting ...

For the last several decades low carb advocates have pitched their diet as means to weight loss, better glycemic control, and even life extension. Many avid fans, like Noakes and Attia, have thrown around several low level studies or short term studies to support the low carb dietary pattern. Meanwhile, the data for more plant focused, carb rich diets like the Mediterranean and Whole food plant based diets have been gleaning more and more support. From prospective trials to population and epidemiology data, such plant focused diets seem to be the ideal pattern for physical therapists (PTs) to recommend to many clients. Let's take a look a recent National Institute of Health (NIH) trial comparing a low carb animal based diet to a high carb plant focused diet.

Published in Nature Medicine, the NIH trial was relatively small and focused on short term results. Researchers housed the participants in a NIH controlled facility, proving to increase the internal validity and controls of the st...

Emerging evidence is revealing how Vitamin D can help patients with COVID-19, commonly known as the Coronavirus.  Vitamin D is known as the "sunshine vitamin" as it is produced in the skin with sun exposure. Most Americans are deficient in Vitamin D, possibly due to the lack of optimal sun exposure and/or their poor diets. In order to get peak Vitamin D levels from sun exposure, a person must remain in direct sun with most the body exposed for 20 minutes under peak sun (usually 11am to 1pm). Vitamin D can be found as a fortification in many foods such as cereals, dairy milk, plant-based milks, while it is found naturally in some mushrooms. The specific Vitamin D in focus would be D3, also known as cholecalciferol.

So what's the data on Vitamin D and COVID-19? Well, randomized trials and cross sectional studies have shown that ~60% of patients with COVID-19 were vitamin D deficient upon hospitalization, with men in the advanced stages of COVID-19 pneumonia showing the greatest deficit....

The holidays are here and our clients are busy hanging decorations and eating lots of holiday food. Most of this holiday food is loaded with extra calories from added sugars, fat, and processed junk. After climbing their ladders, lifting the boxes, and the stress of traveling and seeing family, they come crawling into our clinics or gyms with extra weight and a sore back.

What can we do as Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPTs)? Aside from our traditional physical therapy treatments like manual therapy and exercise, we should be using patient education for weight loss. Here are some of our top tips for PTs and weight loss.

Journal Your Foods

Holidays bring big emotions and lots of junk food. Many of this junk food is eaten without our clients' being aware they are eating hundreds, if not thousands, of extra calories. These calories add up quickly promoting weight gain, reducing glycemic control, and stimulating inflammation.

To improve your PT outcomes and shed some pounds, data show t...

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, NSCA-CPT, CNPT, Cert-DN

If you were reading the news last week then you might have seen an article that sounds something like: "Good News, Meat May Protect You from Heart Disease." While this sounds exciting and promising, many of the published media articles just don't dive into the science enough to give citizens and clinicians an educated viewpoints. Let's examine the new evidence, its science, and what impact it should have on physical therapy practice.

The Article

The main research paper the media is slinging around can be found in mSystems, an open access journal. The authors, Kivenson and Giovanni, published the paper title An Expanded Genetic Code Enables Trimethylamine Metabolism in Human Gut Bacteria, which full-text can be found here. Both Kivenson and Giovanni are researchers at Oregon State University and their primary focus is in microbiology.

mSystems is a relatively new journal. Overall it has an impact factor of 6.28...

By Dr. Sean M. Wells

Many facets of nutrition can impact older adults' function and health. The focus on this blog article will be to highlight how inflammation, which can be mediated via diet, impacts older adult function and health. 

Using the Dietary Inflammatory Index (DII), physical therapists can quantify the amount of inflammation a client's diet is provoking. Essentially the score ranges from as low as -5 to as high as 5, with a "fast food diet being reported at 4 and a macrobiotic diet being listed at -5. Probably the best diets on the DII are vegetarian Indian diets and other Asian diets rich in vegetables and spices. Another way of "scoring" or ranking the inflammation cause by a diet is to use an A-F system. An "A" score would be ideal and the most negative (e.g. close to -5, which is the least inflammatory), while "F" is the most inflammatory (e.g. most positive, 5). An average, or "C" score, would be a 0. 

 Using the DII, PTs can see how diet impacts health and functio...

By Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, NSCA-CPT CNPT, Cert-DN

Physical therapists (PTs) are stepping up their game and focusing on important in the clients' lives: social determinants of health (SDOH), wellness, alcohol and drug use, sleep, and nutrition. As we venture into a newer world of PT practice, clinicians need to be armed with useful tools and resources to help them along the way. Let's outline some of our team's favorite nutrition apps that have helped us help many clients.

Nutrition Guide for Clinicians

Published by the well-known Physicians' Committee for Responsible Medicine (PCRM), the Nutrition Guide for Clinicians is a simple app that all Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPT) should have installed on their phones. The app allows a clinician to easily look up a condition or diagnosis, and then scroll through easily summarized data on simple nutrition tips that can contribute or treat the disease. Authors of the app list copious studies in their references for PT...

By: Dr. Sean M. Wells, DPT, PT, OCS, ATC/L, CSCS, CNPT, NSCA-CPT, Cert DN

Many people kickback and enjoy a cold beer or nice glass of wine with a meal or just to relax. But does alcohol consumption pose a risk to our health and physical therapy patients? The answer can be difficult to find amongst the literature, especially due to industry influence. Let's take a look at the guidelines, some upcoming revisions to alcohol intake recommendations, and what all this means to PTs and physical therapy outcomes.

Old Guidelines

Alcohol intake guidance varies depending on where you live. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and the Dietary Guidelines demonstrates that females should consume no more than 1 drink per day, while males can have 2 drinks per day. Most of this guidance is rooted in the fact that males usually have larger mass, and therefore, can physiologically "handle" more booze. Obviously all drinks are not created equal, so if  a person takes the US guid...

It's exciting to see our team has been active in the community and online. Dr. Wells was featured in the online blog, Eat This Not That, over the past few years. Here are few excellent articles focused on nutrition, physical therapy, weight loss, and health.