Daily in my physical therapy practice based in Lee’s Summit I see patients that ultimately end up with me due to dehydration. Older adults are prone to dehydration. This can be due to decreased sensation of thirst, but is also often due to side effects from medications, dementia, and many other factors. Unfortunately, they are…
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Plantar Fasciitis Plantar fasciitis… I keep hearing these commercials on the radio making it seem like some special (and very expen$ive, like $1000 and up) insoles are some sort of miracle fix and that there’s this great store in Lee’s Summit that can sell them to you. As a Doctor of Physical Therapy, I would…
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Hip Bursitis… Most people hear about this at some point, if they don’t experience it themselves. I would like to describe what it actually is, why people get it, and give you some ideas and options to start improving. What is hip bursitis? Hip bursitis is irritation (and potentially inflammation) of a bursa in the…
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So you did it… you finally committed to getting a knee replacement after months or years of pain, physical therapy, injections, and suffering. If you are anything like the 100’s of people I have seen who have had a knee replacement, you will have some doubts and worries, and I am here to answer some…
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 Which exercises should I avoid after 50? You probably were hoping to find some inherently dangerous exercises to avoid as you age here. Well, you won’t. The exercises you have to avoid as you age past 40 are… NONE OF THEM! That’s it… there are not really any exercises that suddenly become ‘dangerous’ as we…
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If I was pushed, I would say the most common thing I treat in my Lee’s Summit Physical Therapy clinic is back pain and sciatica. If you aren’t familiar with sciatica, it is a pain that radiates down the back of the leg (along the sciatic nerve), sometimes all the way into the foot. It…
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This week, a new patient from Lee’s Summit asked me if physical therapy and exercise were really going to be safe, considering his extreme back pain. He was concerned that he would injure his back with the movements we were planning to do. Initially, it would seem that exercising a painful body part would be…
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I will explain a little about why the pain in your leg with sciatica has little to nothing to do with an actual problem in you leg. I’ll also give some options for people with sciatica in and around Lee’s Summit to start feeling better. WHAT IS SCIATICA? Sciatica is one of the most common…
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  It’s a question I get almost daily, whether I think a patient should ice or heat. The short answer is usually “whichever makes it feel better.” Well, there you go… problem solved! Not what you expected from a Doctor of Physical Therapy? Ok, let’s look at it a little more in-depth. First, we should…
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A recent study (news article link) “suggests that if people who suffer from things like lower back pain choose to do physical therapy, rather than initially taking painkillers, there’s a nearly 90 percent probability they won’t eventually need any of that type of medication.” The underline is mine because the vast majority of people (including…
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