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07 Thu

Exercise as a prescription

Exercise as a prescription

Written by:  Paul Kochoa, PT, DPT, OCS, CKTP, CGFI

 

The other day, a patient mentioned this article about the movement towards doctors handing out a new type of prescription.  This wasn’t for a new drug or experimental medicine, it was for exercise.  

The article basically says that we talk a lot about exercising, but we don’t really do anything about it.  What if exercise was written as a prescription?  The article goes on to talk about the known benefits of exercise and how people talk about doing some form of exercise, but we go about it all wrong.  Walking the dog?  Perhaps a good form of exercise, but not if it’s a chihuahua. 

Exercise only is beneficial when a few parameters are set, specifically:  intensity and duration.  A study investigated using these specific parameters and writing out prescriptions out to sedentary patients.  Just talking about starting some exercise program didn’t do anything to change a patient’s level of activity.  However, when the doctors started writing out the exercise specifics on a prescription pad (even filling out an infinity symbol on the ‘refill’ line), the patients were more likely to begin being active.  Like the fact that the exercise was written on a prescription pad held more importance for the patients.

Primary care doctors may not be well versed in the specifics parameters of exercise, that’s not their specialty, but this is a good start.  With 30% obesity in the United States and several diseases that can be prevented or cured by exercise, getting a prescription from a doctor for exercise is a good thing.

Physiotherapists are doctors, some go further in their studies and specialize.  Here at Professional Physical Therapy and Training, we have doctors of physical therapy that are orthopedic clinical specialists.  Exercise and movement and manual therapy are our areas of expertise.  We prescribe corrective exercise just as mentioned above, but more specifically for addressing musculoskeletal, integumentary, or neurological deficits.  We don’t use a fancy prescription pad that medical doctors do, but we’ve been doing this far longer than they have.

If you would like more information, please call Professional Physical Therapy and Training at 973-270-7417.  Our offices are located within the YMCA locations in Madison and Summit, NJ.  You do not need to be a member of the YMCA to visit with us.

Image courtesy of stockimages / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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