Fitness Matters
Community Newsletter from New Heights Physical Therapy Plus, Inc.
April 2011
In this issue:
New Heights News
How Pain Hinders Healing
Live Longer – Think Better: How regular, fun exercise improves the mind now and well into old age.
New Heights News
Pilates
Lay the foundation for a lifetime of mind/body fitness. Through pilates classes, you can expect an increase in strength, flexibility, mobility, balance, and body awareness, as well as a decrease in back pain and other general pains.
For more information, visit our Pilates website: PilatesConditioningPDX.com
Bike Right!
Bike Season is here! Its time to get you bike into New Heights and have Kevin Schmidt PT fit your bike to your body and riding style. More info here: NewHeightsTherapy.com/bike_fitting
How Pain Hinders Healing
Rehabilitation Doesn’t Have to Hurt
Overflow When rehabilitating injuries to muscles and tendons, New Heights Physical Therapy Plus keeps exercises within a pain free range of motion. There are exceptions to this rule, but the science strongly suggests that muscles heal faster and better when the person is not in pain. Pain alters hormone responses that are relevant to tissue repair. Pain generates a cortisol response that reduces tissue healing and that can initiate processes that break down muscles (i.e. catabolic processes).
One of the reasons that exercise does not have to hurt is the neurologic principal of overflow. Generally speaking, exercise in one area of the body creates neurologic input and muscle activity in other areas of the body. In a classic study, researchers had participants do biceps curls with their right arms over a period over six weeks, but they did not exercise their left side. The researchers did before and after strength testing. Strength increased on the right side as expected, but biceps strength increased on the left side as well! The strength increase on the left side was less, but it was significant. For instance, when talking about how forcefully the study subjects could extend their elbow joints (eccentric strength), the strength gain on the unexercised left side was 77% of the eccentric strength gain on the right side! This is a classic example of how neurologic input affects healing. To a large extent, muscles strengthen and heal because neurologic input and subsequent chemical reactions in the body make it happen.
Understanding how neurology affects rehabilitation and healing, New Heights Physical Therapy Plus is able to design physical therapy programs that heal faster by minimizing pain and by taking advantage of neurologic principles such as overflow.
Personal Exercise
Live Longer – Think Better
Hippocampus Want to be as sharp as you are now well into old age? Regular, fun, exercise may be the key. Edward Creagan, MD, of the Mayo Clinic writes that by the age of 70, 25% of men and 70% of women cannot lift a gallon of milk. The normal aging process reduces muscle mass and changes the mind. Starting at age 30, Americans lose 1% of muscle mass and 1% of flexibility per year. By age 65, a normal American performing only normal daily activities has lost 35% of his or her muscle mass. Fortunately, this situation is largely avoidable.
The most recent study on the subject of how exercise improves the mind is making a lot of headlines. The researchers used MRI to measure the hippocampus of people who started on an exercise program. They compared the results to people who behaved “normally,” and did not have a normal exercise routine. They found that people who exercised regularly had improved performance on memory tests. The MRIs actually measure a growth of the hippocampus among the exercisers and a mild shrinking of the hippocampus among non-exercisers. The hippocampus is a section of the brain involved in memory and improved responses to stress. Other studies have found that cardiovascular exercise is what improves the mind, while strength training alone does not.
If strength, improved memory, improved stress response, are not enough to persuade you to dust off that bike and join the commuters on the Hawthorne Bridge, consider this:
- Exercise reduces the likelihood of age-related dementia by 77%.
- Exercise prevents Alzheimer’s by improving circulation to the brain (and perhaps by increasing the presence of growth factors in the brain).
- Exercise reduces the progression of cognition impairment.
- People who exercise regularly live longer.
- Exercise reduces the likelihood of colon and prostate cancer by making the bowels work more efficiently.
- Prevents and reverses the effects of osteoporosis – even among post-menopausal women.
- Prevents diabetes and aides in the metabolism of blood sugar – even for people who already have diabetes.
- Prevents high blood pressure and prevents high cholesterol.
- Improves mood.
