A Regular Checkup to Adjust Dosage and Response
The science of wellness continues to improve. Regardless of age, people need to participate in activity (may or may not be “exercises”) that will keep or improve their comprehensive fitness. The minimal amount of physical activity and the parameters of fitness have been well-cited by the World Health Organization, and American College of Sports Medicine.
For the purposes of this blog, we consider that activity or exercise, like medicine, has a dosage that is most well-suited to a person’s capacities, preferences, local resources, and health conditions.
Like medicine, physical activity should be monitored (vital signs, biometrics, weights, repetitions). The body’s response to a consistent and unchanging stimulus can provide diminishing returns, leading the prescription of exercise to need adjustment even more frequently than a supplement or pharmeceutical. This can come in the form of periodization and other adjustments that include mode of activity, intensity, circuit training, and fitness-focus (endurance, strength, power). These points deserve more depth and development, yet even at this level it is clear that regular visits with a health care professional that can adjust the dosage, is just-as or more justified than visits with a practitioner that prescribes medicine.
Yes, physical therapists are uniquely qualified to prescribe exercise and physical activity with full considerations as noted above (capacities, preferences, resources, health conditions). Annual checkups to screen for problems are one thing, yet more regular well-visits to adjust physical activity, should be a “thing of the future”.
As a final point on this thread, we consider the related discussion of “what is skilled therapy”? So, in the the absence of improvement, do we still need PT? Can it be justified? In the face of obligatory age-related changes, functioning at a plateau can mean that someone is functioning, thriving, and participating…with the gains that they have amassed through skilled therapy and hard work. Thriving and participating is not a time to discharge, it is a time for a dental model of maintenance (“see you in 3 months”), to optimize the body’s responses through adaptation in the face of varied stimuli.