Hello! I’m Daniela. Doctor of physical therapy, lover of the outdoors, wife to Jace and mother to my one year old son, AJ. Now let’s cut to the chase – why did I start a blog?
Well, I’ve been working in a physical therapy clinic for several years and there has been an ever present theme – my patients want to google their problems. One of my favorite things about being a physical therapist is getting to teach my patients all about their body, why they are having the issues that we are seeing, and how an impairment in one body region can affect the other.
Here’s an example of why google is not the answer when you need physical therapy
One of my best friends went on a very long hike one weekend. In fact, she hiked almost non-stop all weekend long – something she isn’t accustomed to. After this long weekend, she told me she was having horrible knee pain. She googled “knee pain” and found tendonitis. She had convinced herself she had tendonitis. However, when she described her symptoms to me and sent me a picture pointing to where it hurt, I immediately knew it wasn’t tendonitis. And I’m familiar with how her body moves.
You see, this dear friend of mine walks with her hips internally rotated a bit (think: knees kind of facing each other instead of forwards.). As you might imagine, the knees will get angry after a while of moving in that way. The medial (closer to midline) side of the knee gets irritated, and this is resolved with some hands on treatment for pain mitigation as well as a lot of motor control and hip strengthening. This is something we treat frequently in physical therapy. But her tendon? Tendon was FINE. She later went to see an orthopedic surgeon and a physical therapist and they confirmed this.
Google provides vague information on physical therapy diagnoses. Incomplete information is misinformation.
When we don’t have any background in what we are googling, the information we find sounds very specific. To someone who is a professional in this area, however, this is very vague and unhelpful.
Enter: my “Wirthy” thoughts (see what I did there?). I want to share information with you so that you can know more about the varying conditions that are out there. I want to point out in my posts when the information I’m sharing is STILL vague. Why would it still be vague? This is the beauty of physica therapy – the details of how we treat an injury depends on the individual, and how they move.
But hey – this is ok. Because I’m going to share my insights with you. I’m going to share what I look for in a movement pattern, how that pattern may affect different regions of the body, and how we can address it.
I hope you find this information helpful.
I hope that if not helpful, you at least find the content interesting. I love sharing physical therapy information with my patients and I find they are often hungry for more.
So please, don’t google. Don’t scare yourself into thinking you may need a crazy surgery, and on the flip side don’t delude yourself into thinking you don’t need one. Hang out here and read something by one of the actual providers who treat these conditions.
I offer a free resource on this site for you
I have a **free** resource that I am happy to share with all of my subscribers. Check out my exercise database. People always ask me how to strengthen specific muscle groups throughout the body – this resource shares this information with you. There are not only varying exercises but tips on form as well. Subscribe for free using the box at the top of this page. You will then receive an e-mail containing the password to the database.
**Disclaimer: This website does not contain any medical advice. I cannot provide direct medical advice through a website or other remote means. This website is meant to be informative only and does not replace the input of your medical provider. If you have a concern please seek medical attention immediately. I also cannot answer questions related to individual medical advice.**
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