5 Things to Get the Most Out of Your Treatment

    At Impact PT we pride ourselves on our results! Our business model allows us to spend a full hour individually with each patient. This often allows us to reduce the total amount of visits needed for you to return to your fullest self.

That being said we always want to increase the value of what you receive from us. So we thought that we would give you some tips for the other 167 hours of the week you spend outside of Impact.

 An open and conclusive line of communication helps us dial in on diagnosis and prognosis specific to your injury. We welcome challenging patients who have tried everything else and are still looking for a solution. Taking the time to listen and ferret out these details may help reveal something that was overlooked in the past. As you will see from our follow up tips there are a lot of things in basic lifestyle that can effect your pain experience.

2: Sleep hygiene: Everyone is looking for the next cutting edge recovery gizmo, tactic, or idea. However, we often overlook the simplest and single most powerful recovery tool in our arsenal, our own bed.

Everyone should be aiming for 7+ hours of quality uninterrupted sleep every evening. Sleep hygiene refers to some habits that can help improve the quality of your sleep.

–Avoid blue light: Try not to utilize a cell phone, tablet, laptop or other electronic device for 2-3 hours before bed and no cell phones in the bedroom,  according to research by the University of Toronto and Harvard Health. Exposure of blue light can increase Cortisol, which wakes you up, and decreases melatonin, which puts you to sleep. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

–Complete darkness: Invest in some black out curtains and sleep in a cool pitch black room. Again this speaks to our body’s natural bio-rhythms and allows us to fully enter the deepest, most restorative stages of sleep necessary for tissue healing and health.

–Have a night time routine: Go to bed at a consistent time and have a ritual which helps you to wind down. This could be some diaphragmatic breathing, reading a book to your kids, anything non stimulatory. Routine and rhythm are something inherent to us as a species

3: Hydration: Most of us have heard the fact that the human being is 75% water. Beyond that water is key to our body’s waste disposal system. Our body has several mechanisms for eliminating toxins including the liver, kidney, skin, and lungs.

All of which require proper hydration to function optimally. So the process of improving tissue health and restoring activity requires these systems firing on all cylinders. Aim for 1 oz per pound of bodyweight per day of water. Other beverages do not count in your total so drink up!

4: Move: Humans are meant to move, it’s deeply ingrained in our DNA and has a wide range of mental and physical benefits. Now how much and how intense you move is highly specific to the individual. Our staff is full of CSCS (Certified strength and conditioning specialists) and experienced strength coaches.

 

Let us evaluate your movement program and tailor volume and intensity specific to your injury state. Nothing can beat a 20 minute walk in the sunshine, blood flow and vitamin D are two of nature’s powerhouses for regulation and regeneration. Try to take a no cell phone walk every day!

5: Eat: Everything you put in your body can have a positive or negative effect on your healing. Nutrition is definitely not a one size fits all prescription so we will give some basic principals to improve your food experience and nutrient absorption of nutrients.

–Sit down and eat slowly. No electronics, no TV just sit and eat quietly or with someone else and enjoy conversation. When you get a chance to focus on your food and the experience your body’s hormonal and neurological processes for digestion and satiety have a chance to work to their fullest

–Chew- The first step to digestion starts in your mouth. Chew your food much more than you think is necessary and it has wide ranging benefits. Proteins are more readily absorbed since they get more fully broken down mechanically and your body can process them better later in the digestive tract. Your body will produce more saliva if you chew slowly. This is a positive as saliva contains specific enzymes needed to digest carbohydrates.

–10 colors: Aim for 10 colors per day of fruits and vegetables. Various colors mean a varying window of vitamins and minerals. This means that we are getting a wide variety of nutrient dense foods. You will provide your body the pieces needed for health and also it will help with the feeling of fullness.

 

 

At Impact our goal is to help you get better quicker. So hopefully this list of tips for outside the clinic can help us to achieve this goal as  a true patient/clinician team!