Conditioning Exercise Rehabilitation
							I’ve noticed a trend in healthcare starting about 5 years ago.  The use of exercise rehabilitation as part of a patient’s care plan has emerged as one of the true staple in a good rehabilitation program.   In the past two years I’ve even noticed both insurance companies and independent medical evaluators actually pushing to make exercise rehabilitation a part of patients’ care plans - and for good reason. The mounting evidence of research shows patients heal quicker, and are less prone to have future injury re-occurrences if exercise rehabilitation is part of their care plan.
				Why is this? Well, our muscles are the main stabilizers for every joint in our body.  If the muscle’s performance breaks down the ligaments are forced to absorb the stress.  This scenario is often seen in ankle sprains where the muscles cannot respond quick enough to protect the joint, and the ligaments of the ankle become sprained or torn. Ligament injury is typically much more serious than muscle injury. When the ligaments are over-stretched, as in a sprain, this can lead to chronic joint instability - especially if the surrounding muscles are not adequately rehabilitated. Studies have shown that there is up to a 17 times greater chance of suffering a ligament injury when an individual participates in strenuous activity with weakened muscles that were incompletely rehabilitated following a previous injury! An added benefit of exercise rehabilitation is that when muscles are properly rehabilitated, patients recover faster and heal more completely. I often incorporate the use of exercise rehabilitation as part of the care plan of my patients. I use exercise rehab in the treatment of back, neck, shoulder, knee, ankle, and most other injuries. The results have been very positive. Most commonly we use a device called a Thera-Ciser™ to treat lower back, mid-back, and extremity injuries.   The Thera-Ciser™ is a simple, but very effective, devise that uses resistance tubing to prove an excellent isokinetic workout.  For neck rehabilitation we typically use a device called the Neck-Sys™ to provide resistance for an isokinetic workout.  Both the Thera-Ciser™ and the Neck-Sys™ have different resistance levels that can be adjusted to make the workout easier or harder.  For the ankle a wobble board is often used to improved reaction time and to increase range of motion.  We will give a more detailed explanation on how to use of all of these rehab devices if they are recommended to you as a part of your care plan.