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coordination, and strength of muscles
and bones will help you stay on your
feet or recover faster should an injury
occur. If you do exercise, listen to your
body. “When you’re younger, it’s one
thing to play through the pain, but, as
we get older, we need to listen to our
bodies and stop when we feel that pain
we would have ignored at 20.”
At Bodies in Balance Physical
Therapy, the four therapists on staff
see many seniors for joint replace-ment
rehabilitation, tears, sprains,
breaks, arthritis and balance/vertigo
issues. Beth Connell, who holds her
doctorate in physical therapy from the
University of North Carolina Chapel
Hill, says they see many injuries asso-ciated
with falls.
“People aren’t required to do as
much physically now, especially post-retirement,”
Connell says. “We lose
muscle mass, bone density, balance
and coordination at accelerated rates as
we grow older. Many of these things
are reversible, to a degree, and we
work with senior patients to help them
regain what they’ve lost over time.”
Connell says that balance is easily
lost, but also easily regained. “When
dizziness goes away and balance is
restored, patients feel more confident.
They work harder and show faster
improvements, motivated by the posi-tive
changes they see.”
Bodies in Balance has high-tech
equipment, like the SMART Balance
Master, which measures your center
of balance and determines where you
begin to lose balance based on the
visual stimuli it provides. This tech-nology
aids in therapy treatments, but
the old fashioned hands-on approach
is still at the forefront.
“We try to treat therapy in a realis-tic
way,” Mrs. Connell said. “By help-ing
our senior patients regain balance
and strength by walking up and down
our stairs and doing other exercises
that relate to everyday tasks, they gain
the confidence, strength and agility to