More love to the Physical Therapy world from actors! Get on board everyone!!

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/la-et-tony-awards-2017-updates-ben-platt-to-young-people-the-things-1497238069-htmlstory.html

yes! Indeed the medical world is changing and as PT’s we are legally allowed to treat patients without a prescription! Best. News. Ever. Right?! Spread the word ya’ll!! .

So here is the scoop, upgrading our educational requirements to Doctors of Physical Therapy gave us the knowledge base to treat patients right off the street, without a prescription. We call this having Direct Access. And yes, it is safe! In fact, given the nature of our full body, multi system approach to evaluations, studies have shown that we are actually some of the best at determining what is going on and who is best suited to help you. If it seems like something is out of our scope of practice, we will refer you to the right place! 
Going to a Physical Therapist first cuts back on time spent going to a million different doctors, getting a million different test, getting put on #opioids, getting #injections , and even getting #surgery . Even if you have no aches and pains your PT can help you with preventative care, health, and wellness. 
Our speciality is helping achieve optimal movement and there is literally nothing that can take the place of movement. To move is to live! 
#Efficiency 
Not every state and every insurance policy is created equal, so make sure to check with both to get your specifics. .

And yes, that is my mom in the video. So remember, she is watching us and reminding us all that change is happening!

Well, my favorite word in the english language is giggle. I mean come on, who doesn’t love to #giggle and laugh?! The truth of the matter is that laughter really is a great form of medicine. Physiologically, when we laugh, it impacts our muscular, cardiovascular, endocrine, immune, respiratory, and central nervous systems. How? Well for starters, it increases our heart rate and respiratory rate thereby improving the oxygenation of our tissues thus improving healing. Also, medical studies have shown a correlation between the release of certain #endorphins during laughter and an improved pain tolerance. Win-win! It decreases stress, anxiety, tension, and helps to get your focus off of the issue at hand. So, just believe me when I say, the way your body will respond to my touch, a movement, or an exercise will be better after laughing. 
In regards to play, having spent some time doing #PediatricPhysicalTherapy I realized that children just want to be able to play. As we age our lives become more serious and we forget to play. Sure, we go out and have a drink with friends or go to a fitness class but to actually do silly, goofy, imaginative play doesn’t happen as often. Play is of course really fun but it is also incredibly important for our bodies and our brains. The sensory input received from being on a swing, or going down a slide, or rolling around in the sand cannot be substituted. Our brains accommodate to the challenges we present it with so changing up the vestibular, visual, tactile and kinesthetic input only makes our system that much better. Increased play is linked to improved brain function, improved productivity, improved sleep, and improved quality of life. Sounds pretty good to me!
I seem goofy and silly, but everything I do is purposeful and backed by science.#health, #fitness, and #rehab do not need to be dull. In fact, they will be much more efficient if they aren’t! I could go on forever with all the medical jargon but I would rather you get off your phone and go Play!!

 I get it. The words on MRI results can be super scary especially if you are in pain! MRIs are a really great tool to give us a general idea of what is going on but remember they are taken at one point in time, when you are lying down, not moving. So eh. Not that functional really. I mean, how often is someone’s pain THE WORST when they are lying down and not moving? Pretty much never. Remember, the human body was created to move. That is literally what it does best. I digress back to why doctors sometimes seem unimpressed by scary sounding results… The good news is that the studies show that the pain and the results aren’t necessarily correlated. In fact, studies of 1000s of asymptomatic people found that 73.3% of male and 78.0% of females in their 20s have bulging disks! And over 80% of asymptomatic people over 50 have degenerative disk disease! I mean, come on! All of those are high enough to be passing grades on an exam! So what does this all mean?! Basically, just because your MRI shows something scary doesn’t actually mean that it is scary! And it doesn’t even mean that it is the source of your pain! Most likely it isn’t! Mind blown right?! The same findings hold true with things like arthritis in your joints. So take deep breath. Life isn’t over. 
One question I ask my patients is if their pain is constant, meaning that nothing makes it better nothing makes it worse. Unless this is the case, how could it be the actual arthritis/DJD that hurts? The arthritis/DJD doesn’t go away if you offload the joint so the pain should be the same 100% of the time. If not, I beg to say that perhaps there is something mechanical going on that is more likely the root of your pain. And maybe, just maybe, that mechanical problem is a large part of the reason you developed that arthritis/DJD/disk bulge in the first place. So why not let a movement specialist like a Physical Therapist check you out, watch you move, and see if there is something we can do to help.

#AWPT#physicaltherapy #rehabilitation #rehab#PT #wellness #health #athlete #workout#recovery #bodies#student #teacher#doctor #lifestylePT #aniquewalters#prevention #fitness #movement#longevity #physio #yoga #pilates #spin#barre #healthquestions #healtheducation#fitnesseducation

To this one I ask right back, what do you think posture really means? Sitting or standing completely still doesn’t really happen. Usually you are in that position for a reason: to type, to eat, to brush your teeth, etc. all of which are motions in conjunction with your “posture”. Our bodies are built to move. @adamwolfpt put it best, “when we stop moving, we die”. So I ask again, what really is good posture? As you watch the video of the gorge @stephlrowe above, keep in mind that no two bodies or spines are a like. Some are straight, some are flat, some are curvy, some people talk about the J- shape, some talk about the S-shape, but the fact of the matter is that they are all different. So perfect posture for you will be different then perfect posture for me. The name of the game is finding out where your body is weak, where your body is shortened, where your body is lengthened and correct the imbalances to find the sweet spot of where you can find a balance of mobility on top of your stability. Our bodies will find both mobility and stability but they may not be in the right places. This is what is commonly discussed as #compensationpatterns. Fixing your posture isn’t about being the perfect distance from the monitor or the perfect seat height because guess what, you can still sit with crappy posture in the most ergonomically correct set up. Our bodies are smart! They figure out the path of least resistance. So in order to truly work on your posture you need to figure out where your imbalances are, work on them, and then the magic really happens once you start to re-wire your brain into knowing what your ideal posture feels like. It takes time. All good things do. Would you ever build a skyscraper with a crumby foundation, weak scaffolding, and not connect the electrical wiring? eh. probably not. So lets not do it with our bodies either. #itdepends . . . . .

#posture #AWPT #recovery #lifestylePT#aniquewalters #prevention #fitness#movement #longevity #healthquestions#fitnessquestions #scoliosis

t all depends on if you want to just get rid of the pain that you have or if you want to actually get rid of the root of what caused that pain in the first place. Wasting time drives me absolutely nuts. My family actually refers to me as efficiency queen. Fixing the root of the problem is the most efficient way to treat. It may take a little longer on the front end, but if it prevents you from having the problem again, you will ultimately have more time to live your life. Short term investment for a long term gain. 
By coming to you and watching you do the things that are important to you, I can narrow in on exactly where the problem lies. It is impossible to figure that out without getting immersed into your life. If you just start building without understanding all of the details, you are essentially just working to mask the problem, rather than solving the problem. 
PT’s are like mechanics but for the body. Say you get a nail in your tire. You patch it. You can drive on it. For a while at least. Eventually it will be replaced. And perhaps it causes damage to your shock absorbers. Now those need to be replaced. The same is true with our bodies. How can you expect to do a yoga pose and not get hurt if you can’t even breathe correctly? Think about it. (quick, put one hand on your chest, one hand on your belly. Breathe. Your belly should be going in and out and your chest should barely be moving. Is that what is happening? Are your shoulders shrugging up and down? I hope not!) Once the problem is determined then YES! exercises and stretching will be essential! But… your body will need things catered specifically to you. Again, efficiency. I want you to do the things that will give you the most change in the most time effective way. So, when I give you something, it is for a reason. A good reason. I will never, ever give you something that isn’t worth it. . . .

#AWPT #physicaltherapy #rehabilitation#rehab #PT #wellness #health #athlete#workout #recovery #lifestylePT

So here is the thing, I have never been the type of person to buy into that whole 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it' mentality. Everything and everyone can always be improved. Always. Change seems to get a bad wrap, but let's be honest...nothing great ever came from being the same. The Physical Therapy world is expanding daily to improve the way we can help each and every one of you. I am just trying to do my part. My #DPT gave me the tools to analyze and breakdown your every move in such a way that I can make it better. Regardless of what the move may be, I can make it better. This approach of coming into YOUR world, to see what YOU do allows me the opportunity to utilize my tools to make your world a better place. Manual Muscle Testing and Range of Motion are important, but how many times does someone have normal #MMT and #ROM but they still cannot perform the skill or task they desire? This approach changes that. I am given a glimpse into your world allowing me to truly cater my treatments to those unique things that make you who you are. It is imperative that we discover the underlying issue before we start to fix the problem and the only real way I can do that is to be there. On the ground. Watching it happen. I don't want to replicate things. I don't want to simulate things. I want to do things. Real things. And that is why I want to change the #PT world. It can be better. It will be better. And this is just my part in beginning that changing force. Yes change is scary. Yes change is risky. But change is real, and change is worth it. The doorway over the exit of my high school had the #MahatmaGhandi quote "You must be the change you wish to see in the world" So I guess it finally sunk in. Go be the change! . . . .

#AWPT #physicaltherapy #rehabilitation#rehab #wellness #health #athlete#workout #recovery #bodies #teacher#doctor #lifestylePT #aniquewalters#prevention #fitness #movement#longevity #healthquestions#fitnessquestions #lifelonglearning#lifelongeducation #losangeles

This weeks question is one of my favorites. Most people do not recognize the extensive educational background that is required of Physical Therapists and I believe that it is no one’s fault but our own. It is not fair for PT’s to get upset when people confuse us with personal trainers or athletic trainers or for us to get mad when people refer to their Chiro’s as Dr. but not us because we have done a poor job of educating people on what we go through to get to say we are PTs. So here it is. To become a Physical Therapist you must attend a 3 year graduate program after college to receive a degree from an accredited school as a Doctor of Physical Therapy (#DPT). …Shout out to George Washington University @gwupt @GWSMHS… We learn ALLLLLL kinds of things including wound care, pharmacology, cardiopulmonary diseases, neurology, women’s health and even diagnostic imaging on top of all the anatomy/biomechanics/physiology etc. This is a clinical doctor, similar to a dentist. So no, we do not need to get a Master’s degree first. And no, we do not have a PhD which is an abbreviation of Doctor of Philosophy. After we receive our DPT we have to take at least 2 exams. One is the national board exam, think the BAR exam for lawyers. The second is a state licensing exam. Each state has different laws that PTs have to follow. You must pass both the national and state exams to practice. To recap, we get our Doctor of Physical Therapy title from our graduate school and our license is dependent upon passing the national board exam. So you will always want to look for someone to have DPT, PT after their name because you can still be a DPT without being licensed. And no, we cannot prescribe medications. Not yet at least ;-) Keep the questions coming guys! Till next week ya’ll! . . . .

#AWPT #physicaltherapy #rehabilitation#rehab #PT #wellness #health #athlete#recovery #bodies #student #teacher#doctor #lifestylePT #aniquewalters#prevention #fitness #movement#longevity #questions #answers#healthquestions #fitnessquestions#lifelonglearning #lifelongeducation#healtheducation #fitnesseducation

• One of the things that I agreed to do the day I added the Dr. initials to my name was to dedicate myself to lifelong learning, and thus to lifelong educating. Understanding how our bodies work helps us protect them. Since our bodies can be confusing and they don’t always make sense, I thought I would give everyone an opportunity to ask questions and I'll give answers! Every Friday I will answer one question in depth. No matter how obscure or how simple you think the question is, just ask. I'm sure tons of other people have the same one! DM or email me at anique@aniquewalters.com with your questions. Can't wait to drop some knowledge for ya'll! Cheers to the freakin’ weekend and stay safe at @Coachella everyone! .
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  #AWPT #physicaltherapy #rehabilitation#rehab #PT #wellness #health #athlete#workout #recovery #bodies #scoliosis#student #teacher #DPT #doctor#lifestylePT #aniquewalters #prevention#fitness #movement #longevity #questions#answers #healthquestions#fitnessquestions #lifelonglearning#healtheducation #fitnesseducation