Cold and Flu Prevention Tips

I don’t know about y’all but I am loving the combination of cooler mornings and evenings with warm sunny afternoons! Last night I saw several people wearing the official outfit of fall in Colorado (hoodie and jeans with flip flops) and it made me think of other things I love about fall: driving through the mountains to see the aspens changing colors and hear the elk bugle, crock pot recipes like chili and pot roast and watching football and soccer (the other football) games. By the way, Team DocTalk is tied for first with a 2-1 record, just in case you were wondering.

Unfortunately, the change in weather also brings on cold and flu season. Those of you who have kids in school (or are a kid in school) have probably noticed the rapid increase in sniffles, coughs, and sneezes. Colds and the flu are viruses, which mean there’s no cure for them, but there are things we can do to decrease our chances of getting sick.

1. Wash Your Hands Often          

Viruses can last on a surface for hours or days. WebMD gives this advice: “If no sink is available, rub your hands together very hard for a minute or so. That also helps break up most of the cold germs. Or rub an alcohol-based hand sanitizer onto your hands.”

2. Don’t Cover Your Mouth with Your Hands When You Cough/Sneeze

Germs linger on your hands and are easily transferred to whatever you touch next. Use a tissue if it’s available. Or join the many elementary aged kids who have learned “The Vampire” (sneeze/cough into the crux of your elbow)

3. Don’t Touch Your Face
Viruses tend to enter the body through the eyes, nose and mouth. Touching your face is an easy way to receive and transmit these germs.

4. Drink Plenty of Fluids

As the weather turns cooler we aren’t sweating as much and probably don’t feel the need to drink as much as we did in the summer but it’s still just as important. The typical, healthy adult needs to drink eight, 8-oz glasses of fluids each day. NOTE: Tea, coffee, alcoholic drinks, and sodas will dehydrate your body even more, so they don’t count as “hydrating fluids.” (Think more juice and water)

5. Take a Sauna
Wait a second, what? Yeah, I was a bit confused when I read about this too. “Researchers aren’t clear about the exact role saunas play in prevention, but one 1989 German study found that people who steamed twice a week got half as many colds as those who didn’t. One theory: When you take a sauna you inhale air hotter than 80 degrees, a temperature too hot for cold and flu viruses to survive.” Regardless, if someone tells me to go to a spa “for my health” I’m not going to ask twice!

6. Get Regular Exercise
Here’s where we at Mountain Valley Physical Therapy can really help you out! If you’re looking to start up an exercise program, or want to change your current one to match the changing seasons, we’d love to give you some pointers and guidelines to help you avoid injury.

7. Taste the Rainbow (and I don’t mean Skittles)

Fruits and veggies that have a dark green, red, or yellow color have special natural chemicals that help your body stay healthy and fight germs.

8. Decrease Smoking and Drinking Alcohol
Both of these have been shown to suppress or deplete the immune system’s fighting power. (NOTE: I’m talking more about heavy alcohol consumption. Don’t freak out—you can still have a beer while watching the game, or a glass of wine with your dinner.)

9. RELAX

Seriously, when I was little I fought naptime like crazy. The world was filled with too much adventure and with an early bedtime I had precious few hours to waste one on taking a nap. Now I’d love it if we started up a Siesta program here at work. Going to bed and waking up at the same time as well as trying to get 6-8 hours of quality sleep do a lot to give our bodies time to recover from the previous day and prepare for the day ahead. Fatigue lowers our defense mechanisms—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

Guidance for this post came from this site.

Signs and Symptoms of Concussions

After posting the bit about concussions and helmets, I’ve had several people ask me what defines a concussion. Many people think it has to involve a loss of consciousness, but that is not always the case. The Mayo Clinic states it best when it defines a concussion as “a traumatic brain injury that alters the way your brain functions.” Most of us would agree that concussions can happen when the head hits an object or when a moving object hits the head, but did you also know that it can also occur when the head and upper body are violently shaken?

Typically a concussion is mild and involves a brief change in mental status or consciousness. With a severe concussion there will usually be an extended period of loss of consciousness and/or amnesia. Below is a list of common signs of a concussion:

OBSERVED SIGNS (things you might see in the person who’s been injured)
-Dazed, confused, stunned
-Forgets instructions or unable to recall events around the time of the injury
-Disoriented to time, place, events
-Mood/behavior changes
-Loss of consciousness
REPORTED SIGNS (things you might feel if you’re the injured person)
-Headache, pressure
-Nausea, vomiting
-Imbalance, dizziness
-Blurred vision or sensitivity to light/noise
-Difficulty concentrating
-Impaired memory
-Feeling sluggish, hazy, groggy, general malaise

Most of the time it takes 7-10 days to recover from a sports-related concussion and within 3 months for a non-athlete. In some situations (5-20%) a person can have symptoms that persist for an extended period of time (usually 3 months but can go as long as a year) after the initial concussion. This is called post-concussion syndrome (PCS). The World Health Organization (WHO) has created a list of symptoms for PCS:

Post-Concussion Syndrome
-Headache
-Dizziness
-Fatigue
-Irritability
-Difficulty performing mental tasks and concentrating
-Impaired memory
-Insomnia
-Decreased tolerance to stress, emotional excitement or alcohol

Regardless of whether the injured person is an athlete or not, it is important to have a medical team evaluate these symptoms before the person returns to the previous activity. Physical therapists are a key component of this team as we can help to restore normal motion and stability to the neck, decrease dizziness and headaches, and offer modifications to daily and recreational activities until the symptoms are resolved.

For more info, please visit:
www.advanceweb.com/PT
www.mayoclinic.com

Concussions and Helmets

My dad convinced me this year to join his fantasy football team. “It’ll be fun—just family members,” he said. So between last Sunday and Monday I watched most of 3 football games (which is about 2.5x more than I typically watch) and cheered on my players. I am proud to say that after round one Team DocTalk has a winning record!

Besides the madness that is fantasy football, football season also perpetuates other time-honored favorites—face/body painting, friendly (hopefully!) smack talk between fans of rival teams, and great tailgate food. Sadly, football also propagates not so beneficial things like player-injuries, specifically concussions, which is what today’s post discusses.

The gravitational force that keeps us attached to Earth is about 1-G. A change (+ or -) of even a couple G’s is enough for us to notice (hence the pressure we feel when a plane takes off or when going down hill on a roller coaster).  The average boxer experiences 58-G’s when he takes a punch but an average football tackle can be 80 to over 100-G’s!! Most concussions are at the staggering level of 95-G’s!! I don’t say this to scare you, but to emphasize how serious of an impact (pun not intended) concussions have on your brain. And the damage increases significantly if the player goes back into the game and gets hit again before the brain has completely healed. The soft tissue that is our brain was not created to withstand such aggressive trauma.

Now I’m not anti-football—after all, I grew up in Texas, where football is king—but I am most emphatically pro-helmets and helmet research. Wearing the right kind of helmet can decrease the amount of G-forces on the head by about half. The University of Pittsburgh Medical Center and the Helmet Protection Research Laboratory in California have written numerous studies on the benefits of wearing a helmet. (http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2006/01/69993 and http://www.hprl.org/) I strongly encourage you to check out these websites.

Helmet wearing shouldn’t just be limited to playing football. With skiing and snowboarding season just around the corner and plenty of good weather left for road and mountain biking, it’s a good idea to sit down and talk with your family about the necessity of wearing protective headgear.  After spending one of my PT internships at Kindred Hospital, treating patients with traumatic brain injury, I want to urge you very strongly to wear helmets when on a motorcycle or ATV. It doesn’t take a fall at high speeds to permanently impact (or end) your life. (read this)

Rock climbing, kayaking, caving, long boarding, skiing, biking…Colorado has so many opportunities for adventure and outdoor exploration all year long. We should take advantage of them, but let’s do them safely and wisely—by wearing a helmet.

Core Stability Exercises

Two weeks ago I talked about the muscles that give us core stability, how they’re designed to work, and how they change in response to pain or surgery. Last week I debunked the myth that sit-ups and crunches are the best (or even a beneficial) exercise for your back and core. This week I’d like to give you some examples of ways to strengthen those core muscles in a safe and effective way.

First Step: Locate the Transverse Abdominis Muscle
Lie on your back with your knees bent and feet on the ground and place both hands over your belly (between your navel and pubic bone). Open your mouth and exhale as though you are trying to fog up a pair of sunglasses so you can clean the lens. If you use enough force you will feel your TrA contract under your hands. (It will subtly drop away from your fingertips toward your spine.) Another way to contract the TrA is to imagine you’ve got a raging sunburn on your abdomen and you’re trying to keep your shirt from touching it. The motion is subtle–the back should neither arch nor press into the floor and your legs (especially the buttocks) should stay relaxed. Imagine a corset being drawn tight (and thank God we women don’t have to wear corsets anymore!).

Modified “crunches”
Lie on your back with your legs resting on a chair/exercise ball/couch. Gently tighten your TrA and maintain the contraction for the duration of the exercise. Lift both arms overhead and then bring them down toward your knees. Repeat. Keep breathing normally and make sure the head/neck/back still and relaxed (only the arms move). Continue this for 1-4 minutes, taking breaks as the TrA fatigues and you can’t keep it tightened. DON’T LIFT UP THE HEAD. (see last week’s post)

     

Variation: You can also criss-cross the arms, one at a time, toward the opposite knee. For more challenge, use 1-3 lb dumbbells or exercise bands.

    

Quadruped Leg Lift / Bird Dog
Get onto your hands and knees and tighten the TrA. Slowly straighten one leg behind you, stretching the foot toward the back wall. Make sure you don’t rotate the pelvis and back (they should stay table-top straight). Lower the leg and repeat with the other leg. Do this 10 times each leg.

Variation: You can straighten one leg behind, then lift the opposite arm out in front.

 

Planks
Tighten the TrA (are you sensing a pattern here?) and come onto knees and elbows, keeping the hips and the back straight. Hold this position for 10-15 seconds and then rest. Repeat 5-10 times

Variation: Do the plank on your elbows and toes. Or you can try a side plank. The plank position also easily transitions to a push-up, provided you keep the body completely still as you lower and raise it.

   

There are easily 100 different exercises you can do to improve your core stability—and lots of progressions/variations of these exercises mentioned above. The key things to remember are to tighten the TrA throughout the entire exercise and keep the spine stationary as the arms/legs move. Advanced exercises involve maintaining core stability while the trunk moves, but today I’ve just listed a couple of base level exercises. When executing these (or any core stability) exercises you should feel no pain. Pain is an indicator that the exercise is being performed incorrectly or that it might be more advanced than what your body can currently tolerate. For more core stability exercises or if you’re having difficulty or pain with exercises please call us at Mountain Valley Physical Therapy. We’d love to get you started on a program that matches your fitness level and challenges you to grow!