Article's to share

With my travelling in the past week I have had a chance to catch up on some reading. The Nov. 20 issue of ADVANCE for PT's and PTA's had some great articles including:

• Running backwards - the benefits of this include strengthening your body from different angles. There are even reverse locomotion marathons in France, Germany, and Italy.
  
• Health & Wellness --> Healthy People 2010
• The benefits of the apple - big memory booster
• Dog/canine PT as a career and a dog that is used as a therapeutic tool
• Pilates for pregnancy
• Working with the special education team
• Treatment of repetitive stress --> don't just change the environment, change the motion pattern...
• A great article about scope of practice and liability of a PT
• and of course the cover story about treating athletes as a PT
  

Furthermore, I thought this was a vital snippet to share:

Patients May Wish to Consider Physical Therapy for Pain Relief

In light of proposed sterner warning labels for acetaminophen, aspirin, and ibuprofen by federal health officials, patients may wish to consider the benefits of physical therapist intervention for pain relief from certain conditions.

"Many people are looking for alternatives to the sole use of medication to deal with painful conditions," says APTA President R Scott Ward, PT, PhD, in a recently released press release. "Pain medication may help you get through periods of severe pain, but it won’t always help you eliminate the underlying cause of some kinds of pain. For many individuals, it is the underlying causes such as poor posture and alignment, weak and/or inflexible muscles, or tight joint structures that actually exacerbate the painful condition."

There are many types of pain and inflammation that can be reduced by physical therapist intervention. For example, chronic pain in the back, shoulder, or knee, or pain associated with certain degenerative diseases such as osteoarthritis, can be reduced with the appropriate combination of medication and exercise.