In this article, we’ll discuss the value of combining nutrition with physical therapy, and how together, they will optimize patient outcomes and transform your practice.
As physical therapists, we’re always talking about links. The kinetic chain is the perfect example, by describing how subtler mechanics may influence knee pain in a client with patellofemoral syndrome.
There’s the link between exercise and cognitive function, and between age and your chance of a hip fracture sustained by a fall. We tell young athletes to limit specialization in sports because it’s linked to overuse injuries. Instead, we promote lifelong movement because it is so strongly linked to the overall quality of life.
Despite all this, many physical therapists continue to treat patients for injury and chronic pain syndromes, without addressing one of the central pillars of health– nutrition.
There is a movement happening in the physical therapy profession. Physical therapists who want to truly make the greatest impact on their patients’ lives are innovating and reaching beyond traditional protocol. They recognize that optimal healing and recovery following injury, surgery or other painful conditions, is unquestionably linked to optimal nutrition.
Nutrition and Physical Therapy
There is no debating that nutrition can directly affect both function and recovery, and that poor nutrition is a key element in many of the conditions physical therapists evaluate and treat.
Chronic disease associated with obesity and behaviors linked to a sedentary a lifestyle call for nutritional intervention. In this way, nutrition plays a central role in improved treatment outcomes and long-lasting change.
Assessing a patient’s nutrition, diet and eating habits– along with our expertise in assessing one’s ability to move with minimal pain – allows a physical therapist to treat patients more holistically, leading to a number of immediate benefits, including:
- Decreased inflammation.
- Decreased nociceptive input.
- Improved cognitive function.
- Improved insulin and blood sugar regulation.
- A significant improvement in patient outcomes and satisfaction.
- Credibility as a valuable, go-to resource within your community.
- The acceleration of the healing process while reducing the chance of persistent pain.
Including nutrition as a parameter in your initial evaluation will help you fill a critical treatment gap that many physical therapists either overlook, or don’t feel comfortable addressing. When combined with therapeutic exercise, manual therapy, cognitive interventions, and patient education, such an approach can transform patient outcomes and rank your practice as a go-to within your community. Referral partners will take notice too!
Nutrition and Physical Therapy Screening
From a strictly outcome-based perspective, screening for nutrition and adding it to your patient intake can elevate your level of service, allowing you to stand out in your market as a safe and holistic option for patients with more complex issues.
Conditions include:
Inflammation: Helping patients reduce inflammation by upgrading their diets offers immediate and long-term benefits to people suffering from ailments such as rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, pre-diabetes, diabetes, and metabolic syndrome.
Obesity: Excess body weight, especially visceral fat, can lead to a number of issues that decrease movement and can lead to a sedentary lifestyle– causing the obesity issue to snowball. Obesity is an inflammatory disease that increases the risk of mortality and depression.
Osteoarthritis: Also considered an issue related to obesity, research has shown that changes in nutrition and eating habits can help alleviate pain from osteoarthritis. A 2018 meta-analysis in the Archives of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation revealed a bidirectional relationship between metabolic syndrome and osteoarthritis.
Autoimmune Disease: Research shows that high-sugar, high-salt diets (common in the U.S.) only worsen the effects of autoimmune diseases such as Chron’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis, Type 1 diabetes, etc.
Prediabetes & Type 2 Diabetes: With such a strong link between diabetes and diet, it would be a disservice to treat patients without discussing how nutrition can prevent or slow long-term complications like heart disease, blindness, kidney failure and neuropathic pain.
These conditions are affected by more than just how a person is able to move today or in the future. It also depends on how a person fuels this movement – preferably in a way that benefits long-term, pain-free health.
Movement and nutrition … it’s all intertwined. To truly treat a person (and not just symptoms) a physical therapist must assess and treat both ends of the spectrum.
Dr. Tatta’s simple and effective pain assessment tools. Quickly and easily assess pain so you can develop actionable solutions in less time.
Nutrition and Physical Therapy Resources
As physical therapists, we owe it to our patients to provide them with big-picture solutions to their problems with pain, inflammation and chronic disease. To do this, however, we will have to include nutrition within our baseline services.
Even the American Association of Physical Therapy has chimed in on this, stating that it is “the role of the physical therapist to screen for and provide information on diet and nutritional issues to patients, clients and the community, within the scope of the physical therapist practice.” Nutrition is part of physical therapist scope of practice.
To promote this integration, the Integrative Pain Science Institute offers physical therapists a 12-part online course titled “Functional Nutrition for Pain and Inflammation.” This course will help physical therapists like you:
- INTEGRATE functional nutrition for pain into your physical therapy practice.
- IDENTIFY the root causes of patient pain, and ASSESS patients and clients holistically.
- INCREASE your referrals while generating high revenues and marketing shares within your community.
[Learn more about our nutrition and physical therapy course here: Functional Nutrition for Pain and Inflammation]
What’s keeping you from including nutrition within your clinic’s services? I want to know. Contact me today to let me know what questions and hesitations you have about nutrition and physical therapy.
