When dealing with pain, we need to understand why we experience it, and doing that helps us understand what causes pain so that we may overcome it. Pain is a personal experience, and everyone experiences pain. This is what makes pain such a unique phenomenon, and why different methods work better for different people. By continuing to develop our understanding of pain, we have more options of treatment. This give us more tools to use as we customize each persons approach to

The more we know about pain, the better our ability to react and respond to it. While it's not a pleasant experience, it is necessary. It keeps us safe and warns us about threats to our safety. If you want to learn about how our pain system works, then you can read our prior blog What Is Pain? Understanding what pain is important, but you probably want to know more about how to calm the pain. During this blog, we will talk about calming your nervous system, and how learni

This is one of those questions that can have a different answer every day. It's not a clear definition that everyone knows, even though everyone experiences pain at some point. Even though we all experience pain, we all experience it differently. We want to discuss the purpose of pain. By understanding that, we can get a better understanding of what pain is. Pain is an experience we have that acts as a warning system for our bodies. It's an interpretation of sensory input t

We've been talking lately about that time of year when the season changes and you start looking toward your next sport, activity, or adventure. As the days and nights change with welcomed sunshine and outdoor playtime, so does everything in our environment. Snow melts and water levels rise. Grasses grow green and birds sing. Animals wake up and bugs bite. The season change encourages us to shift what we do and keep attached to the nature around us. This change has us looki

I knew the day would come that I would have to write this blog. Of course, I never wanted the day to come, but it's inevitable. Sad, but true. Today we went out to enjoy our local mountain, and we knew on the way up that the probability of having comfortable conditions was minimal to begin. We were up for the adventure as we always are, with a backup plan in place, and snacks packed to keep us going. We took that drive looking for a fun family day. Just two days ago we ha

Do you know what the difference between these two models is? Do you understand the term cash-based? Do you know what your insurance benefits are? This is by far what I get asked about the most when clients first start looking into working with me. Part of the challenge is that the concept is new to many, and the option of not using insurance is like using an oculus near an open stairwell. Let's start with what most people know about insurance. We've always had health insur

Getting the right gear on makes a huge impact on how you feel about your day on the mountain. Doesn't matter what season, doesn't matter what time of day, doesn't matter what terrain, if you don't have the right gear, it can be frustrating, exhausting, and annoying. That's not why you went outside. Let's make sure you've got the right hand protection during your winter sports. We've got two contenders for the best gear. Are you Team Gloves or Team Mittens? They both have th

The start of a New Year is a great time to re-evaluate how you did last year, and what you want to accomplish this year. Call this a resolution, a game plan, a year in review, whatever you like, but it's common practice for many people to reflect and project for a better self. I'm not a stranger to this idea, as I also make aspirational plans for my next year and beyond. Some resolutions may look similar to ones I've made before. These are usually based on an exercise or fi

When learning a new skill, topic, or idea, we each have a preferred way to learn, and we each respond differently to preferred ways of teaching. This can make for tricky communication at times, but it also makes for an opportunity to improve how we learn and how we teach so we can further connect with the person or topic. This past week my family went to our local ski hill and took my older daughter snowboarding. It was her fourth birthday, and she wanted to snowboard! This

Everyone that has lived in an area with winter knows that as the temperature drops and the precipitation accumulates, so do the injuries. Winter is a time of the year when the healthcare system sees an increase in falls and fall-related injuries. You can set your calendar to the first frost resulting in broken hips, broken arms, twisted ankles, and bruised bottoms. We know that many more injuries are happening, but aren't significant enough to come in for help. One of thos

The secret is out. People know. They whisper it to one another. They pass names and numbers. They don't bring it up to their physician. It's the hidden profession that helps people move and feel better without having to check with the doctor first. IT'S PHYSICAL THERAPY! Maybe the secret isn't out to everyone, but those that know understand the value of a good physical therapist. What's so great about physical therapy? I'm happy to tell you, and I'll acknowledge that I'

When caring for clients, healthcare needs to strive for not only curing the problem, but also healing the person. Too often we work on finding a cure, but that doesn't complete the healing process. So, what's the difference between curing and healing? Curing is how we use scientifically based treatments to address a diagnosis. This is when we do tests, exams, and workups to find out what the problem is, then we use procedures, medications, and supplements to solve those pro

We all know the saying of treat others like you would want yourself to be treated, but how about treating yourself as well as you treat others? I know that many people are guilty of taking better care of others than they would take of themselves. This may be sacrificing time for their family, skimping on themselves so they could afford things for others, shorting sleep so you can be somewhere for someone else, or being more committed to helping someone else then they would b

When you lay down to sleep, your body and brain have the opportunity to recover from the stresses and challenges of the day. We do this best when we get into deep sleep, but how many people don’t get good deep sleep because they are uncomfortable or in pain? We are going to go over tactics to make you more comfortable so you don’t have pain, you don’t toss and turn, and you can get into that deep sleep that your body and mind need. When we think about our sleep position, we m

One of the biggest challenges in the healthcare industry, as well as in your own personal finance, is navigating health insurance. It’s a headache, and it’s confusing. We understand that. We’ve been on the consumer side ourselves, so we know all the frustration that can come with using health insurance. Let’s talk about some of the bigger issues, and why we choose to be an out of network practice. First, let’s define out of network practice. This means, that we are healthcare

Let’s wake up and talk about sleep and recovery. Sleep is another one of those necessary things that we all try to short cut and squeeze more time out of our day by doing less of it. We sleep about a third of our lives, so that should tell you how important it is. When we shortcut sleep, what really happens is we get less out of our day, and we would have been better off getting more sleep. So what does sleep do for us? Sleep keeps you healthy by reducing stress and inflammat

Having sufficient hydration allows us to maximize performance, improve recovery, and minimize injury risk and muscle cramping. This makes us better during training and better during competition. It's important to be properly hydrated before exercise, maintain hydration during exercise, and recover hydration after exercise. If we want to perform our best, we need to optimize our hydration so our body can have the best opportunity to succeed. How do you monitor your hydration?

It’s common knowledge that the human body is composed mostly of water. 60% of the entire adult body is water, with higher concentrations in the lungs (83%), heart (73%), and muscles (79%). Even your bones have water in them! Water is a vital nutrient for not only humans, but for all life on Earth. The Earth is made of 70% water, and all living creatures require water to perform processes for survival. Besides keeping our tissues healthy and quenching our thirst, water has man

In the last blog post, found here, we discussed 3 benefits of good breathing. Now that we know all the benefits of using our diaphragm to breath, how do we get that to happen? The easiest cue is to breath through your nose, both on the inhale and the exhale. Why does that work? Well, if we consider breathing through your nose versus breathing through your mouth, we see that your nostrils are much smaller than your throat, which means you have some resistance when breathing t

Controlling our breath is the first muscle we learn to control as babies. Air is the most vital nutrient we bring into our bodies. We can survive without food for three weeks, without water for three days, but without air for only three minutes. Did you ever consider that air was more important than food or water? We breath 18,000-28,000 times a day, but most of us don’t pay much attention to it. If we can improve our breathing, think about all the changes that can happen ove