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

Cardiac physical therapy is a rewarding area of PT practice that takes precision, complex thinking, and a team of specialists working toward a common goal. Often patients in cardiac rehabilitation present with chest pain (angina), ischemic heart disease, stents, bypass surgeries, and/or heart failure.

Doctors of physical therapy do their best to push these patients to maximize their endurance, functioning, and cardiac capability. We often do this through various interventions like treadmill exercises, stepping, strengthening, and breathing techniques.  After a recent study, nutrition may be one of those interventions that PTs need to focus more on.

New Study

Published in the British Journal of Nutrition, researchers found a correlation with plant-focused diets, like the MIND and Mediterranean diets, with left ventricular function. Specifically the researchers looked at cohort sample of 2,512 patients from...

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...

"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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Nutrition and Physical Therapy Bundled Course Offering!

Our team is excited to offer you all 3 of our courses now bundled into 1 easy purchase.  Save 20% off (Valued at $60) with this new offer! 

Why buy the bundle?

Work toward earning your CNPT® credential with one, easy discounted payment. 

Normally, our 3 Courses bought seperately cost $297. Save now and get all 3 courses for just $239. 

What is included?

Our three courses include the following board-approved online continuing education courses:

• COURSE 1 - Introduction to Nutrition for PTs (IN)

  Need the basics to help guide your patients to making good, healthy choices that will improve their quality of life and outcomes? The Introduction to Nutrition is your course for Physical Therapy specific nutrition.

• COURSE 2 - Nutrition Assessment and Prescription for PTs (NAP)

  Being able to assess a patient's diet and make concrete recommendations can make or break the difference in a...

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

There's always a blog or hot article on your newsfeed talking about a "miracle" nutrient or special vitamin. While many of these articles are complete clickbait or mere fluff to get you to buy their supplements, this article has some science and experience behind it. Now that we have that settled, I want to explore the one nutrient that I think has the biggest impact on clients with arthritis: fiber. 

Arthritis comes in several forms but the 2 most common types are osteoarthritis (OA) and rheumatoid arthritis (RA). We as physical therapists (PTs) often help clients with both of these diseases. From exercises, manual therapy, modalities, dry needling, and education -- our roles as PTs is to help our clients move better and reduce their pain. So, how does all this physical therapy talk for OA and RA fit in with fiber? 

Fiber is uniquely a plant-based product that is essentially indigestible to human...