which is a health management company can you tell me more about this yes i love to so i've been a physical therapist for seventeen years and i love what i do been had been fortunate to own jersey physical therapy for fifteen years with jeff and shawn moore who childhood friends and it's just been a pleasure serving the people of our community in plainsboro south brunswick in east brunswick and just helping them achieve their pre cancerous so it was called a tip a tip atypia and that really shocked me because i thought i was living a healthy life with exercise and diet and things of that nature and after going through that luckily everything kind of worked out well and after a couple of other tests you know i was cleared but it really shook me a little bit and i said well you know if i'm living that you know healthy life and this happened to me i really have to take charge  and that's when you know i learned more about prevention and wellness through joining the academy of prevention and health promotion therapies therapies and that is the a p h p t and i invested in education  over the last year learning as much as i can about different aspects of wellness and and then i said well how my going to implement this in the community and i thought that it was very important that i offer these types of services prevention and wellness and health promotion services not only to my current patients in our practice but also to community wide and really spread this message of hope that that that health is a journey and that really if we focus on true health on promoting it living it preventing chronic disease that we can we can really really prevent chronic disease prevent muscular skeletal pain and and live healthy lives so that's when i started jersey live well and the other aspect is we work with companies as well to we know companies are very invested in their employees being healthy especially those that are self insured because they're paying based on the health of the employees and not only is that the right thing to do taking care of employees but it also makes sense from a business perspective so to all these areas whether it's patients community in the workplace there's just a huge need for the spreading the message and just teaching people how to how to do this on a practical basis and how does this pro benefit the elderly well i think it it really can benefit anybody of any age and earlier we get the message out the better no doubt but what's what traditional health care has done through the years it's been more of a reactive system and that's it's unfortunate and what i believe the way to do this is to pivot and to really focus on true health and that's when people are healthy or they have mild disease or impairment and really teaching them ways to stay healthy to thrive and live healthy and and that's you know that's what i believe through different aspects and through the a p h p t we teach people about the five elements of health and those include move that the body needs to move every day a certain amount in order to be healthy get blood flow moving get our systems nourished with the blood flow that we need  fuel just eating the right types of foods to minimize inflammation in pain recovery and sleep and building our resilience we call that endure and finally connecting with people  often as you know is appropriate for the for that person we're all different but we know that the we value social connections and social interactions is a major determinant of health so teaching people about each of these aspects  as been really fun journey and we just did this at the plains for a public library teaching people about each of these aspects and why you know what the problems are you know with our health system what the problems are with the health of our society and chronic disease and what do we do about it you know and by doing these elements we really i can break it down into different aspects and say well you know what everybody else is a journey and it's not something that happens right away you can't i want to do all this and be healthy right immediately it is a journey and it is the hardest part is just getting started so i think the most important thing is to educate people and to tell people you know again just get started and you might be doing well in one area and might not need some help in another and that's what i hope to provide is just you know as an individual as a business as a group of providers this is a ph p t we're looking to help people on this journey  really achieve true health yeah so let's talk let's talk about the five elements you mentioned move if you will recover in doing connect what is the problem in each one let's start with what is the problem with this in not just for the as we possibly can right and we get in the school systems you know and we teach our kids and our relatives and our friends at any age that there are benefits to starting exercise we can always  age so spreading that message that we are we may be old but we are not weak right so there is hope at any age to really improve so if we talk about movement we know that fifty percent of americans get the of moderate intensity aerobic exercise per week is what is recommended for for health and if we do vigorous exercise that comes down to seventy five minutes per week of a ro there's also muscle strengthening which there's recommended twice a week and also flexibility in balance training however again the whole point is that we need to dose exercise appropriately and it depends on the individual depends on their pedometer i'll tell him to take it home and will like watch them for a period of time see what is what are they walking for period of their how many steps are they doing the simple way of just kind of getting started and then from there you know trying to sekolah with them and saying you know what's realistic amount that you can get started with and what we've shown what we've seen is that with just fifteen minutes a day that we've seen improvements in heart health in diabetes and obesity and it actually can add years onto your life know three years has been shown just fifteen minutes a day so again i think that the message is just getting started now again we have to also tell people that more is better so if you can do more you're going to see more benefits in terms of disease reduction in terms of longevity reduce mortality the more we do but it really depends on where you're at kind of meeting that individual where they're at and and just connecting with them and trying to come up with a plan and really just like we would give them a   that's a really important question and we can talk about that for quite a long time it's been said that food is the number one reason that we have poor health in america and  the american diet you know basically if we look at it as you know on an average sensually is sixty three percent processed foods which is really quite a bit twenty five percent animal foods and twelve percent whole plant based food so so if we want to promote health what we tell patients is simply you know find out where they're at we ask a number of questions and really again it depends on the individual but the generality that we make and i don't think anybody would argue with this is we need to eat more plants you know that means you know fruits vegetables leafy greens nuts and seeds l really is an aspect to promote health and we're not telling people that you have to follow a certain diet per se because again this is about making lasting lifestyle changes so you know it's sometimes just about eating an additional three and vegetable a day so it's just like with exercise it's getting started and and realizing that you know the incidence of chronic disease in our country which you know effects basically one in two adults is affected by a chronic disease and  you there's a quote that i like to tell people is from a sleep researcher and he says that every disease in developed nations has causal and significant links to lack of sleep oh wow so sleep is a huge driver of health in terms of many aspects it improves our mood it reduces depression and improves our heart health proves our memory proves our our strength our brain there's so many aspects to to recovery and sleep that we really have to emphasize as a main component of of health and we know that if we look at you know what  it's you know it's a major it's something we need to realize that it's important driver of health and you know we know that two of the major sleep issues are insomnia and sleep apnea so you know talking to patients and first of all screening for these things is extremely important right and it also promoting sleep hygiene you know proper good sleep hygiene we know that blue light anywhere around light all day that's one of the things that has made sleep an issue is that we're around this  lectrified light you know all the time the other thing is is our work you know we work harder longer hours and we you know than we ever have and we pull all nighters and all these things and you know that's another aspect  that again it's promoting good sleep hygiene it's turning off the phone to start amount of time before bed it's to keeping the lights really dark and you know that that promotes good sleep at a certain temperature is important for sleep so it's trying to communicate that sleep helps prevent chronic disease number one it also helps with pain when patients are in pain we found a relationship between back pain and sleep that we can treat the back pain and that can help you know and  if you are in any way think well again that's why you see a provider that helps you with you know helps you reduce the pain but what we found is we not only we we treat the pain but we also treat sleep so we talk about again good sleep hygiene things that promote sleep and sometimes i anxiety you know we tell people let's try to work on some deep breathing techniques some mindfulness activities these are things that can slow the body down quiet our mind and really promote good sleep well how do how do we actually get think you know there's a couple ways and number one would be just try to focus on breathing honestly just it's been shown to if you do deep breathing techniques where you do breathing for four hold for seven breathe out for aid you do that for a  minute that that helps relax the body and promote sleep well i think talking about things with people you know whether friends or relatives you know before you get in bed is also you know helpful thing that might be on your mind absolutely strategies it's just a matter of again trying to purge type sleepers as something that's important that's a driver of health you know using good sleep hygiene habits and and then trying to implement one and then seeing how you do but it's not easy and and that you know what some would say is you know we're all under a low level of stress and stress is not something that we can avoid we all have it to some degree no question is how do we manage it and when we're running around and we're doing lots of activities whether it's you know work family friends social activities even if we do all these activities we're running from one thing to the next sometimes we just need to slow our body down our system is kind of revved up what we call that our sympathetic nervous system and that's really our fight or flight response so so we do it like how do we slow down how do we do that and it's i know it's an area i need to work on personally you know i have a lot on my plate right i'm trying to do a lot of things and again for me i started yoga that's something that once a week i say i'm going to go there i'm going to really focus on my breathing nothing else is going on i'm also going to get stretching out of it and balance some other benefits but really i'm there for that mindfulness right there are certain apps that have been shown ten minutes a day of just following an know this is one of the more challenging things to discuss to teach people and the way i did it when i did the lecture in plains where was i told stories of people that have been resilient in my life and what i've learned from them so i'll give an example and  again we'll talk to ruth more about this was my grandmother had parkinson's she was diagnosed at a young age and when she was in her forty's when my parents got married she moved in with us and and she lived with me my you know growing up my whole life and she just had you know she had grit and she had she the toughness about her that no matter what disability she had she was able to kind of to battle it and she was able to come out the other side and that's when we talk about resilience it song about going dance difficult situation and how do you handle it and just coming out doing the best you can and and rising up and so you know she did it through a positive attitude t know great resilience but it's all within us and that's the hope and that's what i hope to tell people is that you know we all can tap into that we've all bounce back from difficult situations in our life and it's a matter of knowing it from the ups to right you know and then the last element is connect which i think is a great one because it's one of the questions i ask every yes especially the ones who are now single and their kids have moved on and now they're retiring there so tell me the problem the biggest problem with that with connecting with the specially with the elderly well i think that's a really really good question and i think when we look at connect and connect is something we all we all need people to connect to in our lives to have that tribe of people and doesn't have to be a certain size just people that you know that we can go to in our time of need that help us when we need help that we help them so it's you know it's a it's a two way street and you know when we think of you know who we have to connect to we also think of those that  maybe don't have that and those the opposite so we say who are people that may be lonely lonely and loneliness we know is a public health threat it's been deemed by really by our government as a public health threat trying to identify people that that are lonely and because we know that loneliness is linked to chronic disease and as well social isolation which is a little different in the when that's but they're both the world health organization has deemed you know having social connections and social networks is a major determinant of health so you know again studies have looked at all these factors they've looked at smoking and they've looked at alcohol they've looked the physical activity and i and obesity and they found that social connections and social interactions may be one of the most important determinant of our health and and i think you know as a health care provider and i think all of us as i said join five community groups and make ten friends that's not the playa everybody so i think just number one is identifying it number two is know what their baseline oh what they've done in the past and just getting a friend or just getting somebody to go out there you know meals on wheels or where they're talking to these elders i think we just have to still realize it's a problem and do what we can as community members to help people in their time of need and sometimes you know you see somebody and you might not do something and we've all been you know we've all done this before but i think you know if we really want to make an impact on health in our society in our country you know in our world i think you know i think this is one of the most important things that we have to really focus on and we all need need people to connect with it it helps us stay healthy helps us have a sense of purpose and to really stay stay connected you know and it's a big thing right now you know some will argue you know what it's how to social i think it does allow us to remain connected to people that may be far away so that would be seen as a benefit but i think we have to realize that they're doing that online cannot replace face to face interaction and and what i've learned through some of my right away when you do that you're building a bond with somebody when you do that right and it also lowers our quarters a level which is our stress hormone so those are two amazing benefits right away and the other thing is it releases dopamine which is like natural pain depression and mental health is a huge huge issue we've seen that with the release of the i phone which was in two thousand and eleven we saw a fifty percent increase in depression from two thousand and eleven to twenty fifteen in teenagers so i think it applies to really all of us i don't think we're immune as we get older from these issues you know you know i guess i'll admit i think i'm on my phone too much my wife will tell me that my friends will too but i also like that personal connection and i know that i need that to stay healthy but everybody needs it to a different degree and i think again that goes to the individual basis of all these elements that you know we all need a certain amount but we all need these things and if you think of you think of people that are healthy and they demonstrate these qualities and in our next segment we're going to be talking to people make dr phil felton and ruth levy who i believe are two examples of people that that are thriving that have really aged successfully and aged well and they each that have their own secret to success but you know if we listen to what they have to say i think we'll hear a lot of these over lapping themes and you know my message and my goal is to really spread this message that you know we can do better in health care we can really work with people to reduce people being on medicines reduce the incidence of chronic disease reduce surgeries and really focus with people on being healthy right at any stage if we talk about kids middle age or older adults we can all improve our health through you know through these five taliban and you know again it's a it's a journey it's a process and you know my goal is to through this and my lectures is to really just spread the message of hope that not nobody nobody is beyond hope you know we all can improve we all can get better it takes hard work but we need people that we need to be a lot and you know and work together you know and it's not just me as a lifestyle consultant or physical therapy everyone it's everyone you know we all have a have a place in us if we work together we can really do great things that we can really improve the health our communities well this is been fascinating i really like i've never known about these five elements oh this is really fascinating to me thank you thank you so much for joining us thank you for sharing i'm looking forward to meeting our other guests that you