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

Alzheimer's Disease

Physical therapists (PTs) play a crucial role in helping patients and caregivers in the management of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Alzheimer's disease is a chronic neurodegenerative disease that slowly destroys a person's memory, personality, and physical functioning. Currently there is no none cure, so often PTs are left with help patients try to maintain as much physical and cognitive functioning as they can. The costs associated with managing patients with AD are projected to be over $2 Trillion dollars by 2030 -- yes, trillions!

Promising News

While there's much doom and gloom there is also hope: diet and the gut biome. A major, and first of its kind, study out of Edith Cowan University has established a genetic link between AD and several gut-related disorders. In the Nature Communications Biology Paper, the authors analysed large sets of genetic data from AD and several gut-disorder...

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

Physical therapists (PTs) are direct care providers who help people across many settings and with various pathologies and functional losses. From cardiac issues, metabolic dysfunction, cancer, neurological deficits, and musculoskeletal disorders, PTs can help a variety of patients get stronger, move with more confidence, and feel better. One key tool that can help with PT's treatments is nutrition.

Nutrition is in the scope of practice of Doctors of PT (DPTs), according to the American Physical Therapy Association (APTA). Nutrition is linked with inflammation, recovery, pain, psychological well being, and quality of life. Plus, most of our clients are taking supplements or simply want to get better, faster with any approach possible -- as such, PTs need more quality dietary info.

One of the best evidenced-based resources for nutrition is Examine.com. Examine offers copious research, great summaries, and...

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

I was excited to see a recent publication in our APTA’s PTJ titled Precision Medicine and Physical Therapy: A Health Living Medicine Approach for the Next Century. I have been following the primary author, Rich Severin, on Twitter for some time now and enjoy his perspectives. Overall the article dives into much of what my team and I practice – I earnestly hope it is something other PTs  (physical therapists) begin to practice too. In this light, I’d like to discuss some of the important topics in this article.

First, it goes without saying that general health has an impact on physical therapy, functioning, and quality of life. Chronic health conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes makes healing difficult and are linked with other disease states that cause physical damage to other tissues (e.g. high blood pressure damages the kidneys). Functionally clients struggle...

Fasting, or intentional restriction of food intake, has been around for thousand of years. Much of the roots of fasting comes from religious or spiritual ceremonies; today, fasting is often done for the aspects of improving health and longevity, with some still continuing the religious or spiritual purpose. The data on fasting is robust and doctors of physical therapy (DPTs) need to be aware of the benefits, risks, and the how-to of fasting. Let's get started!

Many various forms of fasting exists. Strict or pure fasting includes the abstinence of food altogether. Time restricted fasting or feeding is where a person restricts feeding to a certain number of daytime hours and uses sleep to help create a partial fast. In other words, a person may eat only from 11am to 7pm, while fasting from 7pm to 11am. Some might consider this a form of intermittent fasting, but the true definition of intermittent fasting is where person will consume food ad libitum one day while restricting food...

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

Weight Loss and Physical Therapy

Traditional physical therapy (PT) does an amazing job at treating dysfunction, pain, and problems. Preventative care and wellness, such as weight loss, was once taboo and often ignored by many physical therapists. However, today's Doctors of Physical Therapy (DPTs) are truly embracing more holistic treatments like nutrition, mindfulness, and sleep habits. Having physical therapy patients lose weight can help reduce inflammation, prevent health issues, and may improve PT outcomes. But what about stopping the weight gain in the first place? Weight gain prevention is vitally important, as it is much more difficult to lose the weight than it is to gain it. Given such interest in these topics, our team found it relevant to consider a recent study looking at weight gain and arthritis -- let's make the case for more PTs to start talking about patients preventing weight.

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...

Insurance physical therapy at your hospital or local clinic is steeped in tradition: find the one problem, focus on it, and fix it. The services are reimbursed based on a fee-for-service model. The more care the more payment that is given, regardless of outcomes or future setbacks. Physical therapist (PT) education skews also towards the model of problem-based learning, exam, and intervention. Lost in the mix of the insurance and educational maelstrom is the patient: what other issues are lurking, how do they address the "whole" patient and not just the one body part or pain, and how can they continue living healthy and happy?

Fortunately a new model of PT practice emerged. The Health-Focused Therapy Model (HFPTM) promotes PTs to recommend notions like smoking cessation, regular physical activity, and even nutrition, when/where appropriate. Researchers at the University of Alabama at Birmingham produced the new model which hopes to only enhance what PTs currently offer.

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