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

Are you a physical therapist (PT) in Florida and want to offer the most modern, holistic physical therapy care by including nutrition? Who wouldn’t, right? But before you dive into offering nutrition advice you might need to know the requirements of PTs offering nutrition in Florida.

Before we jump too far ahead it’s important to understand that two different types of nutrition counseling exist: 

1.) general advice/recommendations for health/wellness; 

2.) nutritional advice specific to treat disease. 

Let's Explore Those Further:

1.) General Advice

Any healthcare provider, even PTs in Florida, with the proper education and training can offer general advice/guidelines for health and wellness. In other words, if you are a practicing PT in FL and a client asks you what a “healthy” diet looks like, you can certainly provide them general nutrition education and resources such as NutritionFacts.org, Government...

Top 3 Nutrition Resources for PTs

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

Physical therapists (PTs) are unique healthcare providers. They are doctorally prepared, trained for direct and primary care, and work in a multitude of settings. Recently the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA) released a new House of Delegate motion stating PTs ought to be more involved with nutrition care and should be trained and educated in nutrition further. Obviously the direct choice for nutrition care would be with a registered dietitian or nutritionist. But what if a PT has the training and legal right to provide nutrition care -- what resources does that PT have to provide optimal nutrition guidance? We will explore the top 3 nutrition resources for the PT!

NutritionFacts.org

Dr. Michael Greger established https://nutritionfacts.org/ with the intent of sharing evidenced-based nutrition knowledge for everyone -- for free! The lifestyle medicine physician has gone to gr...

Population Health and Nutrition: A Tool to “Transform Society”

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

Recently our editor of the Physical Therapy Journal (PTJ), Alan Jette, highlighted a recent article that took a focus on a Framework for Population Health for physical therapists (PTs). Population health considers the health and outcomes of a group of people, and how those health outcomes are distributed within the population. The view of population health is much broader and encompasses not just quality of life and health but also the interplay of the social determinants of health (SDOH), such as individual behavior, healthcare, physical environment, genetics, and social environment. Before we dive into how PTs, using such a framework, can transform society, here’s a great diagram to demonstrate the encompassing view and interplay of population health:

Source: https://www.improvingpopulationhealth.org/blog/what-is-population-health.html

PTs hav...

As physical therapists (PTs), we are far removed from the delivery room. Many of us help women after delivery through relieving post-delivery trauma, core strengthening, or general wellness to return to pre-pregnancy function/fitness status. Many of us also help women struggling with lower back pain, plantar fasciitis, and other ailments prior to delivery. A few of us also work in the neonatal intensive care and hospitals helping newborn children.  We also have large section of our professional organization, the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), dedicated to helping children through pediatric PT. As such, we as PTs are nicely positioned to help counsel women and families on how to optimize delivery, recovery, and possibly infant and children's nutrition.

In The Womb

Many ailments and complications can arise during pregnancy. From lower back pain and posture issues, the musculoskeletal issues appear to be very straight forward for PT management. But what about some of the ...

Top 3 Nutrition Tips for Neuro PTs

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

Physical therapists (PTs) are unique, doctorally-prepared health care providers who work often one-on-one with their clients several times per week. As direct access and primary care providers, PTs can help patients get better functionally and holistically through exercise and dietary interventions. Whether you are a PT working in a hospital or fitness gym, you will encounter patients that have neurological deficits. While most PTs have the go-to physical interventions many struggle to conjure up ways to help these patients with nutritional tips. Below our team at Nutritional Physical Therapy will outline how PTs can offer nutritional tips to patients with neurological deficits.

#1 Reduce Alcohol

Having an ice-cold beer or a glass of wine may be a great way to end a hectic day; however, research has shown that those that have neurological issues may be best to steer clear of ...

My State Bans PTs from Providing Nutrition. What Do I Do?

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

So you’ve looked into several online courses for nutrition in the hopes of helping your patient get better, faster. As you are scouring these online classes you stumble across the fact that you, as a physical therapist (PT), cannot provide nutrition in your state. Seriously? Is this true? Maybe. So, should you simply drop the idea of enrolling into a certification course on nutrition -- absolutely not!

 It should be made very clear that any healthcare provider can offer nutritional information for general health. Whether you call yourself a nutritionist, CNPT® , or health coach, offering generalized health and wellness nutrition information is permitted for almost every state. Such a rationale makes perfect sense: we need people in our country eating better food for better health. The legal issue really comes when you begin to offer disease-specifi...

Can PTs Give Nutrition Advice? 

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

Over the past decade physical therapists (PTs) have been branding themselves as “movement specialists” and “experts in exercise.” Much of this branding has come from the help of the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA), as well as the advancement of the entry-level PT degree from Masters to Doctorate (DPT). With a new image and education, PTs are even better positioned to be in primary care, prevention, wellness, and many other settings other than simple outpatient clinics and hospitals.

Despite such a push for new branding and education, a burning questions still exists within the physical therapy profession: can PTs give nutrition advice?

What the Profession Says

Such was the topic during the Oxford Debate at last year’s (2018) APTA Next Conference in Orlando, FL. I was fortunate enough to be in the crowd and enjoy some of the action. If you’ve never been a par...

Top 3 Nutrition Tips PTs can Give their Clients

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

Physical therapists (PTs) are unique healthcare providers that are positioned to have a major impact on the healthcare systems. PTs are now doctorally prepared, trained in differential diagnoses and imaging, and work with clients directly from the street (e.g. direct access). More importantly PTs often see clients sometimes daily or at least several times per week, depending on the client issue and clinical setting. As such, PTs can be utilized as a major agent of change for health and wellness, and one of the ways they can do this is through nutrition!

One major barrier, as we have highlighted in other articles, for PTs to offer nutrition advice is their education. Another limitations for many PTs is time. A PT may ask: how can I juggle all of these clinical pieces, notes, and still talk about nutrition with my clients? Well, our team at Nutritional Physical Ther...

How to Integrate Nutrition in PT Practice

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

Many physical therapists (PTs) seeking continuing education courses for manual therapy, specialized modalities, and new exercises, feel comfortable with the content before enrolling in the course. Afterall, most PTs had exposure to some, if not all, of these concepts in PT school and in practice. But what about nutrition training?

Like medical doctors the majority of DPTs today and nearly all of the graduate PTs with MS and BS degrees received little to no education in nutrition. Understandably this lack of knowledge leaves a riff in clinical practice and a desire to learn more to help a patient.

So, let’s dive into some ways for physical therapists to integrate PT into their practice. 

#1 Get The Basics

Understanding the basic components of nutrition is a must. Many clinicians think they must enroll in advanced online courses for supplementation, specialized dieti...