You probably don’t think about your knees until you’re sitting in the doctor’s office staring down a diagnosis and a possible knee replacement surgery. How did you land here? You did your best to eat healthy and exercised when you could. Now you throw your back out by just looking at heavy objects, and the stairs feel like a marathon. It feels like your body betrayed you overnight and began falling apart at every seam.
This isn’t uncommon, because many people follow the same timeline. You go to high school, enroll in college, get married, and have children. The experiences, passions, and hobbies a person has make them different than someone else, but that’s a basic timeline everyone follows. Unfortunately, there is little time left for healthy living.
Beginning in your early 20s, your life will start to pick up. You’re making career choices, connecting with friends, starting a life with someone else, and possibly starting a family. There’s work, important deadlines, planning and cooking meals, bussing the children between activities, helping them with their homework, bills to pay, aging parents to care for, and by the end of the day, you’re just exhausted. How do you get time to yourself?
This is where we step in.
At Stretch Physical Therapy and Total Wellness, we’ve always been advocates for our patients, empowering them to lead happy, healthy lives. But starting in 2019, we’re making it a bigger part of our mission to prevent you from “falling apart” at age 60. We know life happens, and we know you have responsibilities, hobbies, or plans that may impede a regular wellness routine. Our goal is to help you find ways to introduce a healthy maintenance regimen into your life as early as possible to help you succeed at stay healthy.
Think about it: If a 28-year-old comes in to see us about their neck pain, we can help them find relief pretty quickly. We’ll work on a regular routine at their appointments and give them some basic at-home exercises to try. But if their diet is poor, they remain stationary at work, and they avoid regular exercise, their neck pain will come back. They’ll have to come back to see us for something that was completely preventative, all because they didn’t follow our plan.
This is also a common reason for surgery, but a large number of surgery procedures can be avoided through physical therapy. The concept is simple: Your body know how to heal themselves. For centuries, the human body has been relying on its natural expertise to help humans survive. But what you do aids in that healing. Your neck pain will return – or begin – if you don’t actively work to keep it and other conditions at bay.
The new year is a popular time to set resolutions and try to create a better “you.” Why not take this chance to create a better future for yourself and ultimately, your loved ones, too. There’s always going to be a reason to put off caring for yourself. Maybe you feel too bogged down at work, or your kid has so many weekend tournaments that finding a free minute is impossible. We know it’s hard, but we can help you find time for yourself – and your body needs you to do so.
