Blog

Direct Access to Physical Therapy In New York State, like most states, people can access physical therapy services directly without the need for physician referral. There are several advantages to direct access.  There is a growing body of evidence that physical therapy direct access can be part of the solution to the high costs and inefficiencies of our current health care system. First, a more direct route to the physical therapist reduces the time between an injury, or the onset of a p...

             Meniscal Tears A recently published research report has received attention this past week in US news outlets. The study, conducted in Finland and published in the New England Journal of Medicine, was centered on a very common orthopedic condition: meniscal tears in the knee. This clinical trial took a sample of people diagnosed with meniscal tears, and randomly assigned them to either an arthroscopic surgery group or a sha...

QUICK TIPS ON NEW YEAR’S RESOULTION SUCCESS With the New Year right around the corner, many will soon flock to the gym in hopes of accomplishing (finally!) their health and fitness goals. To maximize the potential for success during this New Year’s resolution, some helpful tips are in order. 1.) Set REALISTIC goals – In order to avoid the primary pitfalls of most resolutions (ie quitting in early January, getting injured, etc.), one must set realistic goals. The key to a real...

Benefits of Exercise: Update A few weeks ago, a brief review of the health benefits of exercise was posted on the STAR Physical Therapy blog (see Exercise is Medicine from Nov 4, 2013). In the way of an update, a recent article was published in the British Medical Journal (Naci H, Ioannidis J, 2013) that sheds a different light on the relationship between exercise and health.  A team of researchers from the United Kingdom and the US set out to compare the effectiveness of exercise and dru...

    Stop Slouching! “Sit up straight!”—the compulsory words of every mother out there. Just like not forgetting your coat and mittens, your mom was right about this also. Believe it or not, posture plays a role in many common orthopedic problems, especially back and neck pain. By definition, posture is the body’s alignment and positioning with respect to gravity. No matter what position you are in, gravity is imparting a force on your joints, ligaments and...